/  > 


Jeannette  Preston 
Appleeatc  River  Ranch 
Jacksonville,  Oregon 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2007  with  funding  from 

IVIicrosoft  Corporation 


http://www.archive.org/details/carwindowestfromOOdavirich 


]s^hJtC>h(m> 


▲  tiUCEING   BRONCHO 


THE  WEST 
FROM  A  CAR-WINDOW 


BY 

RICHARD  HARDING  DAVIS 

AUTHOR  OP   "van    BIBBER   AND   OTHERS"   ETC. 


ILLUSTRATED 


NEW   YORK  AND  LONDON 

HARPER    &     BROTHERS    PUBLISHERS 

1903 


Copyright,  1892,  by  Harper  &  Brothers. 

All  rights  reserved. 


TO 

M.  K.  J. 

OF 

THE  SEVENTH  INFANTRY 


CONTENTS 


FROM    SAN   ANTONIO   TO   CORPUS    CHRISTI 

OUR   TROOPS   ON    THE    BORDER 

AT   A   NEW   MINING  CAMP      . 

A   THREE-YEAR-OLD    CITY       . 

RANCH   LIFE   IN    TEXAS   . 

ON   AN   INDIAN   RESERVATION 

A   CIVILIAN   AT    AN    ARMY    POST 

THE   HEART   OF  THE    GREAT    DIVIDE 


PAOB 
3 

27 
59 
93 
121 
151 
185 
215 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 


PAOB 

A  Bucking  BroncJvo Frontispiece 

Head-piece 3 

Rangers  in  Camp 9 

'^  Remember  the  Alamo  r 19 

Trumpeter  Tyler 29 

Captain  Francis  H.  Hardie,  G  Troop,  Third  United  States  Cavalry    37 

Water 43 

The  Mexican  Guide 49 

Third  Cavalry  Troopers — Searching  a  Sitspecied  Revolutionist .     .     53 

Mining  Camp  on  the  Range  Above  Creede 60 

Creede 63 

How  Land  is  Claimed  for  Building — Planks  Nailed  Together  and 

Resting  on  Four  Stumps 66 

The  "  Holy  Moses  "  Mine 69 

Debatable  Ground — A  Warning  to  Trespassers 73 

A  Mining  Camp  Court-house 75 

Shaft  of  a  Mine 79 

Valuable  Real  Estate 83 

Upper  Creede 87 

Oklahoma  City  on  the  Day  of  the  Opening 94 

Mve  Days  After  the  Opening 97 

Four  Weeks  After  the  Opening ]  01 

Captain  D.  F.  Stiles 105 

Iccj  April  22,  1889 108 


List  of  Illustrations 

PAGE 

Post-office,  July  4,  1S90 Ill 

Oklahoma  City  To-day — Afain  Broadway 116 

The  Ranch-house  on  the  King  Ranch,  the  Largest  Range  Owned  by 

One  Individual  in  the  United  States 123 

A  Shattered  Idol 127 

Snapping  a  Rope  on  a  Horse^s  Foot 130 

Hillingdon  Ranch 133 

Fixing  a  Break  in  the  Wire  Fence IS*? 

Gathering  the  Rope 141 

Reaction  Equals  Action 145 

Tail-piece 148 

The  Cheyenne  Type 152 

Big  Bull 155 

One  of  Williamson^ s  Stages  . 159 

The  Beef  Issue  at  Anadarko 163 

Indian  Boy  and  Pinto  Pony 169 

A  Kiowa  Maiden 175 

A  One-company  Post  at  Oklahoma  City 187 

The  Omnipotent  Bugler 191 

United  States  Military  Post  at  San  Antonio 196 

United  States  Cavalryman  in  Full  Dress 199 

United  States  Military  Post — Infantry  Parade 203 

Fort  Houston,  at  San  Antonio — Officers'  Quarters 207 

The  Barracks,  Fort  Houston .  210 

Gateway  of  the  Garden  of  the  Gods,  and  Pike's  Peak       .     .     .     .217 

Within  the  Gates,  Garden  of  the  Gods 223 

Polo  Above  the  Snow-line  at  Colorado  Springs 227 

Mount  of  the  Holy  Cross 233 

Pike's  Peak  from  Colorado  Springs    ,     .     , 239 


I 

FROM  SAN  ANTONIO  TO  CORPUS  CHRISTI 


JoVESiFR^^VAPA 


**^    d  '^-^^-^i^h  *  1   l^J^Pich txrci  Har d i n g  D 


FROM    SAN    ANTONIO   TO    CORPUS    CHRISTI 


'  T  is  somewhat  disturbing  to  one  who  visits  the 
West  for  the  first  time  with  the  purpose  of 
writing  of  it,  to  read  on  the  back  of  a  rail- 
road map,  before  he  reaches  Harrisburg,  that 
Texas  "is  one  hundred  thousand  square  miles  larger 
than  all  the  Eastern  and  Middle  States,  including  Maryland 
and  Delaware."  It  gives  him  a  sharp  sensation  of  loneli- 
ness, a  wish  to  apologize  to  some  one,  and  he  is  moved  with 
a  sudden  desire  to  get  out  at  the  first  station  and  take  the 
next  train  back,  before  his  presumption  is  discovered.  He 
might  possibly  feel  equal  to  the  fact  that  Texas  is  "  larger 
than  all  of  the  Eastern  and  Middle  States,"  but  this  easy 
addition  of  one  hundred  thousand  square  miles,  and  the 
casual  throwing  in  of  Maryland  and  Delaware  like  potatoes 
on  a  basket  for  good  measure,  and  just  as  though  one  or 
two  States  more  or  less  did  not  matter,  make  him  wish  he 
had  sensibly  confined  his  observations  to  that  part  of  the 
world  bounded  by  Harlem  and  the  Battery. 

If  I  could  travel  over  the  West  for  three  years,  I  might 
write  of  it  with  authority ;  but  when  my  time  is  limited  to 


The  West  from  a  Car -Window 

three  months,  I  can  only  give  impressions  from  a  car-window 
point  of  view,  and  cannot  dare  to  draw  conclusions.  I  know 
that  this  is  an  evident  and  cowardly  attempt  to  "hedge" 
at  the  very  setting  forth.  But  it  is  well  to  understand  what 
is  to  follow.  All  that  I  may  hope  to  do  is  to  tell  what 
impressed  an  Eastern  man  in  a  hurried  trip  through  the 
Western  States.  I  will  try  to  describe  what  I  saw  in  such 
a  way  that  those  who  read  may  see  as  much  as  I  saw  with 
the  eyes  of  one  who  had  lived  in  the  cities  of  the  Eastern 
States,  but  the  moral  they  draw  must  be  their  own,  and  can 
differ  from  mine  as  widely  as  they  please. 

An  Eastern  man  is  apt  to  cross  the  continent  for  the  first 
time  with  mixed  sensations  of  pride  at  the  size  of  his  coun- 
try, and  shame  at  his  ignorance  concerning  it.  He  remem- 
bers guiltily  how  he  has  told  that  story  of  the  Englishman 
who  asks  the  American  in  London,  on  hearing  he  is  from 
New  York,  if  he  knows  his  brother  in  Omaha,  Nebraska. 
And  as  the  Eastern  man  finds  from  the  map  of  his  own 
country  that  the  letters  of  introduction  he  has  accepted 
from  intelligent  friends  are  addressed  to  places  one  and  two 
thousand  miles  apart,  he  determines  to  drop  that  story  about 
the  Englishman,  and  tell  it  hereafter  at  the  expense  of  him- 
self and  others  nearer  home. 

His  first  practical  surprise  perhaps  will  be  when  he  dis- 
covers the  speed  and  ease  with  which  numerous  States  are 
passing  under  him,  and  that  smooth  road-beds  and  parlor- 
cars  remain  with  him  to  the  very  borders  of  the  West.  The 
change  of  time  will  trouble  him  at  first,  until  he  gets  nearer 
to  Mexico,  when  he  will  have  his  choice  of  three  separate 
standards,  at  which  point  he  will  cease  winding  his  watch 
altogether,  and  devote  his  "  twenty  minutes  for  refresh- 
ments *'  to  watching  the  conductor.     But  this  minor  and 

4 


From  San  Antonio  to  Corpus  Christi 

merely  nominal  change  will  not  distress  him  half  so  seri- 
ously as  will  the  sadden  and  actual  disarrangement  of  his 
dinner  hour  from  seven  at  night  to  two  in  the  afternoon, 
though  even  this  will  become  possible  after  he  finds  people 
in  south-western  Texas  eating  duck  for  breakfast. 

He  will  take  his  first  lesson  in  the  politics  of  Texas  and 
of  the  rest  of  the  West  when  he  first  offers  a  ten-dollar  bill 
for  a  dollar's  worth  of  something,  and  is  given  nine  large 
round  silver  dollars  in  change.  When  he  has  twenty  or 
more  of  these  on  his  person,  and  finds  that  his  protests  are 
met  with  polite  surprise,  he  understands  that  silver  is  a 
large  and  vital  issue,  and  that  the  West  is  ready  to  suffer 
its  minor  disadvantages  for  the  possible  good  to  come. 

He  will  get  his  first  wrong  impression  of  the  West 
through  reading  the  head-lines  of  some  of  the  papers,  and 
from  the  class  of  books  offered  for  sale  on  the  cars  and 
in  the  hotels  and  book -stores  from  St.  Louis  to  Corpus 
Christi.  These  head -lines  shock  even  a  hardened  news- 
paper man.  But  they  do  not  represent  the  feeling  of  their 
readers,  and  in  that  they  give  a  wrong  and  unfortunate  im- 
pression to  the  visiting  stranger.  They  told  while  I  was  in 
St.  Louis  of  a  sleighing  party  of  twenty,  of  whom  nine  were 
instantly  killed  by  a  locomotive,  and  told  it  as  flippantly  as 
though  it  were  a  picnic ;  but  the  accident  itself  was  the  one 
and  serious  comment  of  the  day,  and  the  horror  of  it  seemed 
to  have  reached  every  class  of  citizen. 

It  is  rather  more  difficult  to  explain  away  the  books. 
They  are  too  obvious  and  too  much  in  evidence  to  be  acci- 
dental. To  judge  from  them,  one  would  imagine  that  Boc- 
caccio, Rabelais,  Zola,  and  such  things  as  Velvet  Vice  and 
Old  Sleuth^  are  all  that  is  known  to  the  South-west  of  lit- 
erature.   It  may  be  that  the  booksellers  only  keep  them  for 


The  West  from  a  Car  -  Window 

their  own  perusal,  but  they  might  have  something  better 
for  their  customers. 

The  ideas  which  the  stay-at-home  Eastern  man  obtains 
of  the  extreme  borderland  of  Texas  are  gathered  from  vari- 
ous sources,  principally  from  those  who,  as  will  all  travellers, 
make  as  much  of  what  they  have  seen  as  is  possible,  this 
much  being  generally  to  show  the  differences  which  exist 
between  the  places  they  have  visited  and  their  own  home. 
Of  the  similarities  they  say  nothing.  Or  he  has  read  of  the 
bandits  and  outlaws  of  the  Garza  revolution,  and  he  has  seen 
the  Wild  West  show  of  the  Hon.  William  F.  Cody.  The 
latter,  no  doubt,  surprised  and  delighted  him  very  much.  A 
mild  West  show,  which  would  be  equally  accurate,  would  sur- 
prise him  even  more. ;  at  least,  if  it  was  organized  in  the  wild- 
est part  of  Texas  between  San  Antonio  and  Corpus  Christi. 

When  he  leaves  this  first  city  and  touches  at  the  border 
of  Mexico,  at  Laredo,  and  starts  forth  again  across  the  prai" 
rie  of  cactus  and  chaparral  towards  "  Corpus,"  he  feels  as- 
sured that  at  last  he  is  done  with  parlor-cars  and  civiliza- 
tion ;  that  he  is  about  to  see  the  picturesque  and  lawless 
side  of  the  Texan  existence,  and  that  he  has  taken  his  life 
in  his  hands.  He  will  be  the  more  readily  convinced  of 
this  when  the  young  man  with  the  broad  shoulders  and 
sun-browned  face  and  wide  sombrero  in  the  seat  in  front 
raises  the  car-window,  and  begins  to  shoot  splinters  out  of 
the  passing  telegraph  poles  with  the  melancholy  and  list- 
less air  of  one  who  is  performing  a  casual  divertisement. 
But  he  will  be  better  informed  when  the  Chicago  drummer 
has  risen  hurriedly,  with  a  pale  face,  and  has  reported 
what  is  going  on  to  the  conductor,  and  he  hears  that  digni- 
tary say,  complacently  :  "  Sho  !  that's  only  '  Will '  Scheeley 
practisin' !     He's  a  dep'ty  sheriff." 

6 


From  San  Antonio  to  Corpus  Christi 

He  will  learn  in  time  that  the  only  men  on  the  borders 
of  Texas  who  are  allowed  to  wear  revolvers  are  sheriffs^ 
State  agents  in  charge  of  prisoners,  and  the  Texas  Rangers, 
and  that  whenever  he  sees  a  man  so  armed  he  may  as  surely 
assume  that  he  is  one  of  these  as  he  may  know  that  in  New 
York  men  in  gray  uniforms,  with  leather  bags  over  their 
shoulders,  are  letter-carriers.  The  revolver  is  the  Texan 
officer's  badge  of  office ;  it  corresponds  to  the  New  York 
policeman's  shield ;  and  he  toys  with  it  just  as  the  Broad- 
way policeman  juggles  his  club.  It  is  quite  as  harmless  as 
a  toy,  and  almost  as  terrible  as  a  weapon. 

This  will  grieve  the  "  tenderfoot "  who  goes  through 
the  West  "heeled,"  and  ready  to  show  that  though 
he  is  from  the  effete  East,  he  is  able  to  take  care  of 
himself. 

It  was  first  brought  home  to  me  as  I  was  returning  from 
the  border,  where  I  had  been  with  the  troops  who  were 
hunting  for  Garza,  and  was  waiting  at  a  little  station  on  the 
prairie  to  take  the  train  for  Corpus  Christi.  I  was  then 
told  politely  by  a  gentleman  who  seemed  of  authority 
that  if  I  did  not  take  off  that  pistol  I  would  be  fined 
twenty -five  dollars,  or  put  in  jail  for  twenty  days.  I  ex-- 
plained  to  him  where  I  had  been,  and  that  my  baggage 
was  at  "  Corpus,"  and  that  I  had  no  other  place  to  carry  it. 
At  which  he  apologized,  and  directed  a  deputy  sheriff,  who 
was  also  going  to  Corpus  Christi,  to  see  that  I  was  not  ar- 
rested for  carrying  a  deadly  weapon. 

This,  I  think,  illustrates  a  condition  of  things  in  darkest 
Texas  which  may  give  a  new  point  of  view  to  the  Eastern 
mind.  It  is  possibly  something  of  a  revelation  to  find  that 
instead  of  every  man  protecting  himself,  and  the  selection 
of  the  fittest  depending  on  who  is  "  quickest  on  the  trig- 


The  West  from  a  Car  -  Window 

ger,"  he  has  to  have  an  officer  of  the  law  to  protect  him  if 
he  tries  to  be  a  law  unto  himself. 

While  I  was  on  the  border  a  deputy  sheriff  named  Rufus 
Glover,  who  was  acting  as  a  guide  for  Captain  Chase,  of 
the  Third  Cavalry,  was  fired  upon  from  an  ambush  by  per- 
sons unknown,  and  killed,  A  Mexican  brought  the  news 
of  this  to  our  camp  the  night  after  the  murder,  and  de- 
scribed the  manner  of  the  killing,  as  it  had  occurred,  at 
great  length  and  with  much  detail. 

Except  that  he  was  terribly  excited,  and  made  a  very 
dramatic  picture  as  he  stood  in  the  fire-light  and  moon- 
light and  acted  the  murder,  it  did  not  interest  me,  as  I  con- 
sidered it  to  be  an  unfortunate  event  of  very  common  oc- 
currence in  that  part  of  the  world.  But  the  next  morning 
every  ranchman  and  cowboy  and  Texas  Ranger  and  soldier 
we  chanced  to  meet  on  the  trail  to  Captain  Hunter's  camp 
took  up  the  story  of  the  murder  of  Rufus  Glover,  and  told 
and  retold  what  some  one  else  had  told  him,  with  desperate 
earnestness  and  the  most  wearying  reiteration.  And  on 
the  day  following,  when  the  papers  reached  us,  we  found 
that  reporters  had  been  sent  to  the  scene  of  the  murder 
from  almost  every  part  of  south-west  Texas,  many  of  whom 
had  had  to  travel  a  hundred  miles,  and  then  ride  thirty 
more  through  the  brush  before  they  reached  it.  How 
many  city  editors  in  New  York  City  would  send  as  far  as 
that  for  anything  less  important  than  a  railroad  disaster  or 
a  Johnstown  flood  ? 

On  the  fourth  day  after  the  murder  of  this  in  no  way 
celebrated  or  unusually  popular  individual,  the  people  of 
Duval  County,  in  which  he  had  been  killed,  called  an  indig- 
nation meeting,  and  passed  resolutions  condemning  the 
county  officials  for  not  suppressing  crime,  and  petitioning 


From  San  Antonio  to  Corpus  Christi 

the  Governor  of  :he  State  to  send  the  Rangers  to  put  an 
end  to  such  lawlessness — that  is,  the  killing  of  one  man  in 
an  almost  uninhabited  country.  The  committee  who  were 
to  present  this  petition  passed  through  Laredo  on  the  way 
to  see  the  Governor.  Laredo  is  one  hundred  miles  from 
the  scene  of  the  murder,  and  in  an  entirely  different  county  ; 
but  there  the  popular  indignation  and  excitement  were  so 
great  that  another  mass-meeting  was  called,  and  another 
petition  was  made  to  the  Governor,  in  which  the  resolutions 
of  Duval  County  were  endorsed.  I  do  not  know  what  his 
Excellency  did  about  it.  There  were  in  the  Tombs  in  New 
York  when  I  left  that  city  twenty-live  men  awaiting  trial 
for  murder,  and  that  crime  was  so  old  a  story  in  the  Bend 
and  along  the  East  Side  that  the  most  morbid  newspaper 
reader  skipped  the  scant  notice  the  papers  gave  of  them. 
It  would  seem  from  this  that  the  East  should  reconstruct  a 
new  Wild  West  for  itself,  in  which  a  single  murder  sends 
two  committees  of  indignant  citizens  to  the  State  capital 
to  ask  the  Governor  what  he  intends  to  do  about  it. 

But  the  West  is  not  wholly  reconstructed.  There,  are 
still  the  Texas  Rangers,  and  in  them  the  man  from  the 
cities  of  the  East  will  find  the  picturesqueness  of  the  Wild 
West  show  and  its  happiest  expression.  If  they  and  the 
sight  of  cowboys  roping  cattle  do  not  satisfy  him,  nothing 
else  will.  The  Rangers  are  a  semi-militia,  semi-military  or- 
ganization of  long  descent,  and  with  the  most  brilliant  rec- 
ord of  border  warfare.  At  the  present  time  their  work  is 
less  adventurous  than  it  was  in  the  day  of  Captain  McNelly, 
but  the  spirit  of  the  first  days  has  only  increased  with  time. 

The  Rangers  enlist  for  a  year  under  one  of  eight  cap- 
tains, and  the  State  pays  them  a  dollar  a  day  and  supplies 
them  with  rations  and  ammunition.     They  bring  with  them 

11 


The  West  from  a  Car -Window 

their  own  horse,  blanket,  and  rifle,  and  revolver ;  they  wear 
no  regular  uniform  or  badge  of  any  sort,  except  the  belt  of 
cartridges  around  the  waist.  The  mounted  police  of  the 
gold  days  in  the  Australian  bush,  and  the  mounted  con- 
stabulary of  the  Canadian  border  are  perhaps  the  only 
other  organizations  of  a  like  nature  and  with  similar  duties. 
Their  headquarters  are  wherever  their  captain  finds  water, 
and,  if  he  is  fortunate,  fuel  and  shade  ;  but  as  the  latter  two 
are  difficult  to  find  in  common  in  the  five  hundred  square 
miles  of  brush  along  the  Rio  Grande,  they  are  content  with 
a  tank  of  alkali  water  alone. 

There  are  about  twenty  men  in  each  of  the  eight  troops, 
and  one  or  two  of  them  are  constantly  riding  away  on  de- 
tached service — to  follow  the  trail  of  a  Mexican  bandit  or  a 
horse-thief,  or  to  suppress  a  family  feud.  The  Rangers' 
camps  look  much  like  those  of  gypsies,  with  their  one 
wagon  to  carry  the  horses'  feed,  the  ponies  grazing  at  the 
ends  of  the  lariats,  the  big  Mexican  saddles  hung  over  the 
nearest  barb  fence,  and  the  blankets  covering  the  ground 
and  marking  the  hard  beds  of  the  night  before.  These 
men  are  the  especial  pride  of  General  Mabry,  the  Adjutant- 
general  of  Texas,  who  was  with  them  the  first  time  I  met 
them,  sharing  their  breakfast  of  bacon  and  coffee  under  the 
shade  of  the  only  tree  within  ten  miles.  He  told  me  some 
very  thrilling  stories  of  their  deeds  and  personal  meetings 
with  the  desperadoes  and  "bad"  men  of  the  border;  but 
when  he  tried  to  lead  Captain  Brooks  into  relating  a  few  of 
his  own  adventures,  the  result  was  a  significant  and  com- 
plete failure.  Significant,  because  big  men  cannot  tell  of 
the  big  things  they  do  as  well  as  other  people  can — they 
are  handicapped  by  having  to  leave  out  the  best  part ;  and 
because  Captain  Brooks's  version  of  the  same  story  the 

12 


From  San  Antonio  to  Corpus  Christi 

general  had  told  me,  with  all  the  necessary  detail,  would 
be :  "  Well,  we  got  word  they  were  hiding  in  a  ranch  down 
in  Zepata  County,  and  we  went  down  there  and  took  'era^ 
which  they  were  afterwards  hung." 

The  fact  that  he  had  had  three  fingers  shot  off  as  he 
"  took  'em  "  was  a  detail  he  scorned  to  remember,  especially 
as  he  could  shoot  better  without  these  members  than  the 
rest  of  his  men,  who  had  only  lost  one  or  two. 

Boots  above  the  knee  and  leather  leggings,  a  belt  three 
inches  wide  with  two  rows  of  brass-bound  cartridges,  and  a 
slanting  sombrero  make  a  man  appear  larger  than  he  really 
is ;  but  the  Rangers  were  the  largest  men  I  saw  in  Texas, 
the  State  of  big  men.  And  some  of  them  were  remarkably 
handsome  in  a  sun-burned,  broad-shouldered,  easy,  manly 
way.  They  wero  also  somewhat  shy  with  the  strangers,  lis- 
tening very  intently,  but  speaking  little,  and  then  in  a  slow, 
gentle  voice ;  and  as  they  spoke  so  seldom,  they  seemed  to 
think  what  they  had  to  say  was  too  valuable  to  spoil  by 
profanity. 

When  General  Mabry  found  they  would  not  tell  of  their 
adventures,  he  asked  them  to  show  how  they  could  shoot ; 
and  as  this  was  something  they  could  do,  and  not  some- 
thing already  done,  they  went  about  it  as  gleefully  as  school- 
boys at  recess  doing  "stunts."  They  placed  a  board, 
a  foot  wide  and  two  feet  high,  some  sixty  feet  off  in  the 
prairie,  and  Sheriff  Scheeley  opened  hostilities  by  whipping 
out  his  revolver,  turning  it  in  the  air,  and  shooting,  with 
the  sights  upside  down,  into  the  bull's-eye  of  the  impromptu 
target.  He  did  this  without  discontinuing  what  he  was 
saying  to  me,  but  rather  as  though  he  were  punctuating  his 
remarks  with  audible  commas. 

Then  he  said,  "  I  didn't  think  you  Rangers  would  let  a 

18 


The  West  from  a  Car  -  Window 

little  one-penny  sheriff  get  in  the  first  shot  on  you."  He 
could  afford  to  say  this,  because  he  had  been  a  Ranger  him- 
self, and  his  brother  Joe  was  one  of  the  best  captains  the 
Rangers  have  had ;  and  he  and  all  of  his  six  brothers  are 
over  six  feet  high.  But  the  taunt  produced  an  instantane- 
ous volley  from  every  man  in  the  company ;  they  did  not 
take  the  trouble  to  rise,  but  shot  from  where  they  happened 
to  be  sitting  or  lying  and  talking  together,  and  the  air  rang 
with  the  reports  and  a  hundred  quick  vibrating  little  gasps, 
like  the  singing  of  a  wire  string  when  it  is  tightened  on  a 
banjo. 

They  exhibited  some  most  wonderful  shooting.  They 
shot  with  both  hands  at  the  same  time,  with  the  hammer 
underneath,  holding  the  rifle  in  one  hand,  and  never,  when 
it  was  a  revolver  they  were  using,  with  a  glance  at  the 
sights.  They  would  sometimes  fire  four  shots  from  a 
Winchester  between  the  time  they  had  picked  it  up  from 
the  ground  and  before  it  had  nestled  comfortably  against 
their  shoulder.  They  also  sent  one  man  on  a  pony  racing 
around  a  tree  about  as  thick  as  a  man's  leg,  and  were  dis- 
satisfied because  he  only  put  four  out  of  six  shots  into  it. 
Then  General  Mabry,  who  seemed  to  think  I  did  not  fully 
appreciate  what  they  were  doing,  gave  a  Winchester  rifle 
to  Captain  Brooks  and  myself,  and  told  us  to  show  which 
of  us  could  first  put  eight  shots  into  the  target. 

It  seems  that  to  shoot  a  Winchester  you  have  to  pull  a 
trigger  one  way  and  work  a  lever  backward  and  forward ; 
this  would  naturally  suggest  that  there  are  three  movements 
— one  to  throw  out  the  empty  shell,  one  to  replace  it  with 
another  cartridge,  and  the  third  to  explode  this  cartridge. 
Captain  Brooks,  as  far  as  I  could  make  out  from  the  sound, 
used  only  one  movement  for  his  entire  eight  shots.     As  I 

14 


From  San  Antonio  to  Corpus  Christi 

guessed,  the  trial  was  more  to  show  Captain  Brooks's  quick- 
ness rather  than  his  marksmanship,  and  I  paid  no  attention  to 
the  target,  but  devoted  myself  assiduously  to  manipulat- 
ing the  lever  and  trigger,  aiming  blankly  at  the  prairie. 
When  I  had  fired  two  shots  into  space,  the  captain  had  put 
his  eight  into  the  board.  They  sounded,  as  they  went  off, 
like  fire-crackers  well  started  in  a  barrel,  and  mine,  in  com- 
parison, like  minute-guns  at  sea.  The  Rangers,  I  found, 
after  I  saw  more  of  them,  could  shoot  as  rapidly  with  a 
revolver  as  with  a  rifle,  and  had  become  so  expert  with  the 
smaller  weapon  that  instead  of  pressing  the  trigger  for 
each  shot,  they  would  pull  steadily  on  it,  and  snap  the 
hammer  until  the  six  shots  were  exhausted. 

San  Antonio  is  the  oldest  of  Texan  cities,  and  possesses 
historical  and  picturesque  show-places  which  in  any  other 
country  but  our  own  would  be  visited  by  innumerable 
American  tourists  prepared  to  fall  down  and  worship.  The 
citizens  of  San  Antonio  do  not,  as  a  rule,  appreciate  the 
historical  values  of  their  city ;  they  are  rather  tired  of  them. 
They  would  prefer  you  should  look  at  the  new  Post-office 
and  the  City  Hall,  and  ride  on  the  cable  road.  But  the 
missions  which  lie  just  outside  of  the  city  are  what  will 
bring  the  Eastern  man  or  woman  to  San  Antonio,  and  not 
the  new  water-works.  There  are  four  of  these  missions, 
the  two  largest  and  most  interesting  being  the  Mission  de' 
la  Conception,  of  which  the  corner-stone  was  laid  in  1730, 
and  the  Mission  San  Jose,  the  carving,  or  what  remains  of 
it,  in  the  latter  being  wonderfully  rich  and  effective.  The 
Spaniards  were  forced  to  abandon  the  missions  on  account 
of  the  hostility  of  the  Indians,  and  they  have  been  occupied 
at  different  times  since  by  troops  and  bats,  and  left  to  the 
mercies  of  the  young  men  from  "  Rochester,  N.  Y.,"  and 

15 


The  West  from  a  Car  -  Window 

the  young  women  from  "  Dallas,  Texas,"  who  have  carved 
their  immortal  names  over  their  walls  just  as  freely  as 
though  they  were  the  pyramids  of  Egypt  or  Blarney  Castle. 
San  Antonio  is  a  great  place  for  invalids,  on  account  of  its 
moderate  climate,  and  a  most  satisfactory  place  in  which 
to  spend  a  week  or  two  in  the  winter  whether  one  is  an  in- 
valid or  not.  There  is  the  third  largest  army  post  in  the 
country  at  the  edge  of  the  city,  where  there  is  much  to  see 
and  many  interesting  people  to  know,  and  there  is  a  good 
club,  and  cock-fighting  on  Sunday,  and  a  first-rate  theatre 
all  the  week.  At  night  the  men  sit  outside  of  the  hotels, 
and  the  plazas  are  filled  with  Mexicans  and  their  open-air 
restaurants,  and  the  lights  of  these  and  the  brigandish  ap- 
pearance of  those  who  keep  them  are  very  unlike  anything 
one  may  see  at  home. 

All  that  the  city  really  needs  now  is  a  good  hotel  and  a 
more  proper  pride  in  its  history  and  the  monuments  to  it. 
The  man  who  seems  to  appreciate  this  best  is  William  Cor- 
ner, whose  book  on  San  Antonio  is  a  most  valuable  histori- 
cal authority. 

A  few  years  ago  one  would  have  said  that  San  Antonio 
was  enjoying  a  boom.  But  you  cannot  use  that  expression 
now,  for  the  Western  men  have  heard  that  a  boom,  no  mat- 
ter how  quickly  it  rises,  often  comes  down  just  as  quickly, 
and  so  forcibly  that  it  makes  a  hole  in  the  ground  where 
castles  in  the  air  had  formerly  stood.  So  if  you  wish  to 
please  a  Western  man  by  speaking  well  of  his  city  (and 
you  cannot  please  him  more  in  any  other  way),  you  must 
say  that  it  is  enjoying  a  "  steady,  healthy  growth."  San 
Antonio  is  enjoying  a  steady,  healthy  growth. 

It  is  quite  as  impossible  to  write  comprehensively  of 
south-western  Texas  in  one  article  as  it  is  to  write  such  an 

16 


From  San  Antonio  to  Corpus  Christi 

Article  and  say  nothing  of  the  Alamo.  And  the  Alamo,  in 
the  event  of  any  hasty  reader's  possible  objection,  is  not 
ancient  history.  It  is  no  more  ancient  history  than  love  is 
an  old  story,  for  nothing  is  ancient  and  nothing  is  old  which 
every  new  day  teaches  something  that  is  fine  and  beautiful 
and  brave.  The  Alamo  is  to  the  South-west  what  Inde- 
pendence Hall  IS  to  the  United  States,  and  Bunker  Hill  to 
the  East;  but  the  pride  of  it  belongs  to  every  American, 
whether  he  lives  in  Texas  or  in  Maine.  The  battle  of 
the  Alamo  was  the  event  of  greatest  moment  in  the  war 
between  Mexico  and  the  Texans,  when  Santa  Anna  was 
President,  and  the  Texans  were  fighting  for  their  independ- 
ence. And  the  stone  building  to  which  the  Mexicans  laid 
siege,  and  in  which  the  battle  was  fought,  stands  to-day 
facing  a  plaza  in  the  centre  of  San  Antonio. 

There  are  hideous  wooden  structures  around  it,  and  oth- 
ers not  so  hideous — modern  hotels  and  the  new  Post-office, 
on  which  the  mortar  is  hardly  yet  dry.  But  in  spite  of 
these  the  grace  and  dignity  which  the  monks  gave  it  in  1774, 
raise  it  above  these  modern  efforts  that  tower  above  it,  and 
dwarf  them.  They  are  collecting  somewhat  slowly  a  fund 
to  pay  for  the  erection  of  a  monument  to  the  heroes  of  the 
Alamo.  As  though  they  needed  a  monument,  with  these 
battered  walls  still  standing  and  the  marks  of  the  bullets 
on  the  casements  I  No  architect  can  build  better  than 
that.  No  architect  can  introduce  that  feature.  The 
architects  of  the  Alamo  were  building  the  independence 
of  a  State  as  wide  in  its  boundaries  as  the  German  Em- 
pire. 

The  story  of  the  Alamo  is  a  more  than  thrice-told  one,  and 
Sidney  Lanier  has  told  it  so  well  that  whoever  would  write 
of  it  must  draw  on  him  for  much  of  their  material,  and 

B  IT 


The  West  from  a  Car  -  Window 

must  accept  his  point  of  view.  But  it  cannot  be  told  too 
often,  even  though  it  is  spoiled  in  the  telling. 

On  the  23d  of  February,  1836,  General  Santa  Anna  him- 
self, with  four  thousand  Mexican  soldiers,  marched  into 
the  town  of  San  Antonio.  In  the  old  mission  of  the  Ala- 
mo were  the  town's  only  defenders,  one  hundred  and  forty- 
five  men,  under  Captain  Travis,  a  young  man  twenty-eight 
years  old.  With  him  were  Davy  Crockett,  who  had  crossed 
over  from  his  own  State  to  help  those  who  were  freeing 
theirs,  and  Colonel  Bowie  (who  gave  his  name  to  a  knife, 
which  name  our  government  gave  later  to  a  fort),  who  was 
wounded  and  lying  on  a  cot. 

Their  fortress  and  quarters  and  magazine  was  the  mission, 
their  artillery  fourteen  mounted  pieces,  but  there  was  little 
ammunition.  Santa  Anna  demanded  unconditional  surren- 
der, and  the  answer  was  ten  days  of  dogged  defence,  and 
skirmishes  by  day  and  sorties  for  food  and  water  by  night. 
The  Mexicans  lost  heavily  during  the  first  days  of  the  siege, 
but  not  one  inside  of  the  Alamo  was  killed.  Early  in  the 
week  Travis  had  despatched  couriers  for  help,  and  the  de- 
fenders of  the  mission  were  living  in  the  hope  of  re-enforce- 
ments ;  but  four  days  passed,  and  neither  couriers  returned 
nor  re -enforcements  came.  On  the  fourth  day  Colonel 
Fannin  with  three  hundred  men  and  four  pieces  of  artillery 
started  forth  from  Goliad,  but  put  back  again  for  want  of 
food  and  lack  of  teams.  The  garrison  of  the  Alamo  never 
knew  of  this.  On  the  1st  of  March  Captain  John  W. 
Smith,  who  has  found  teams,  and  who  has  found  rations, 
brings  an  offering  of  thirty-two  men  from  Gonzales,  and 
leads  them  safely  into  the  fort.  They  have  come  with 
forced  marches  to  their  own  graves ;  but  they  do  not  know 
that,  and  the  garrison,  now  one  hundred  and  seventy-two 

18 


Fram  San  Antonio  to  Corpus  Ckristi 

strong,  against  four  thousand  Mexicans,  continues  its  des- 
perate sorties  and  its  desperate  defence. 

On  the  3d  of  March,  1836,  there  is  a  cessation  in  the 
bombardment,  and  Captain  Travis  draws  his  men  up  into 
single  rank  and  takes  his  place  in  front  of  them. 

He  tells  them  ithat  he  has  deceived  them  with  hopes  of 
re-enforcements — false  hopes  based  on  false  promises  of  help 
from  the  outside — but  he  does  not  blame  those  who  failed 
him ;  he  makes  excuses  for  them ;  they  have  tried  to  reach 
him,  no  doubt,  but  have  been  killed  on  the  way.  Sidney 
Lanier  quotes  this  excusing  of  those  who  had  deserted 
him  at  the  very  threshold  of  death  as  best  showing  the 
fineness  of  Travis,  and  the  poet  who  has  judged  the  soldier 
so  truly  has  touched  here  one  of  the  strongest  points  of 
this  story  of  great  heroism. 

Captain  Travis  tells  them  that  all  that  remains  to  them 
is  the  choice  of  their  death,  and  that  they  have  but  to  de- 
cide in  which  manner  of  dying  they  will  best  serve  their 
country.  They  can  surrender  and  be  shot  down  merciless- 
ly, they  can  make  a  sortie  and  be  butchered  before  they 
have  gained  twenty  yards,  or  they  can  die  fighting  to  the 
last,  and  killing  their  enemies  until  that  last  comes. 

He  gives  them  their  choice,  and  then  stooping,  draws  a 
line  with  the  point  of  his  sword  in  the  ground  from  the  left 
to  the  right  of  the  rank. 

"  And  now,"  he  says,  "  every  man  who  is  determined  to 
remain  here  and  to  die  with  me  will  come  to  me  across  that 
line." 

Tapley  Holland  was  the  first  to  cross.  He  jumped  it 
with  a  bound,  as  though  it  were  a  Rubicon.  "  I  am  ready 
to  die  for  my  country,"  he  said. 

And  then  all  but  one  man,  named  Rose,  marched  over  to 


The  West  from  a  Car  -  Window 

the  other  side.  Colonel  Bowie,  lying  wounded  in  his  cot, 
raised  himself  on  his  elbow.  "  Boys,"  he  said,  "  don't  leave 
me.     Won't  some  of  you  carry  me  across  ?" 

And  those  of  the  sick  who  could  walk  rose  from  the 
bunks  and  tottered  across  the  line ;  and  those  who  could 
not  walk  were  carried.  Rose,  who  could  speak  Spanish, 
trusted  to  this  chance  to  escape,  and  scaling  the  wall  of  the 
Alamo,  dropped  into  a  ditch  on  the  other  side,  and  crawled, 
hidden  by  the  cactus,  into  a  place  of  safety.  Through  him 
we  know  what  happened  before  that  final  day  came.  He 
had  his  reward. 

Three  days  after  this,  on  the  morning  of  the  6th  of 
March,  Santa  Anna  brought  forward  all  of  his  infantry, 
supported  by  his  cavalry,  and  stormed  the  fortress.  The 
infantry  came  up  on  every  side  at  once  in  long,  black  solid 
rows,  bearing  the  scaling-ladders  before  them,  and  encour- 
aged by  the  press  of  great  numbers  about  them. 

But  the  band  inside  the  mission  drove  them  back,  and 
those  who  held  the  ladders  dropped  them  on  the  ground 
and  ran  against  the  bayonets  of  their  comrades.  A  second 
time  they  charged  into  the  line  of  bullets,  and  the  second 
time  they  fell  back,  leaving  as  many  dead  at  the  foot  of  the 
ladders  as  there  were  standing  at  bay  within  the  walls.  But 
at  the  third  trial  the  ladders  are  planted,  and  Mexicans 
after  Mexicans  scale  them,  and  jump  down  into  the  pit  in- 
side, hundreds  and  hundreds  of  them,  to  be  met  with  bul- 
lets and  then  by  bayonet-thrusts,  and  at  last  with  desperate 
swinging  of  the  butt,  until  the  little  band  grows  smaller 
and  weaker,  and  is  driven  up  and  about  and  beaten  down 
and  stamped  beneath  the  weight  of  overwhelming  and  un- 
ending numbers.  They  die  fighting  on  their  knees,  hack- 
ing up  desperately  as  they  are  beaten  and  pinned  down  by 


From  San  Antonio  to  Corpus  Christi 

a  dozen  bayonets,  Bowie  leaning  on  his  elbow  and  shooting 
from  his  cot,  Crockett  fighting  like  a  panther  in  the  angle 
of  the  church  wall,  and  Travis  with  his  back  against  the 
wall  to  the  west.  The  one  hundred  and  seventy-two  men 
who  had  held  four  thousand  men  at  bay  for  two  sleepless 
weeks  are  swept  away  as  a  dam  goes  that  has  held  back  a 
flood,  and  the  Mexicans  open  the  church  doors  from  the  in- 
side and  let  in  their  comrades  and  the  sunshine  that  shows 
them  horrid  heaps  of  five  hundred  and  twenty-two  dead 
Mexicans,  and  five  hundred  more  wounded. 

There  are  no  wounded  among  the  Texans ;  of  the  one 
hundred  and  seventy -two  who  were  in  the  Alamo  there 
are  one  hundred  and  seventy-two  dead. 

With  an  example  like  this  to  follow,  it  was  not  difficult 
to  gain  the  independence  of  Texas ;  and  whenever  Sam  Hous- 
ton rode  before  his  men,  crying,  "  Remember  the  Alamo  1" 
the  battle  was  already  half  won. 

It  was  not  a  cry  wholly  of  revenge,  I  like  to  think.  It 
was  rather  the  holding  up  of  the  cross  to  the  crusaders,  and 
crying,  "  By  this  sign  we  conquer."  It  was  a  watchword 
to  remind  men  of  those  who  had  suffered  and  died  that 
their  cause  might  live. 

And  so,  when  we  leave  Texas,  we  forget  the  little  things 
that  may  have  tried  our  patience  and  understanding  there, 
we  forgive  the  desolation  of  the  South-west,  its  cactus  and 
dying  cattle,  we  forget  the  dinners  in  the  middle  of  the 
day  and  the  people's  passing  taste  in  literature,  and  we  re- 
member the  Alamo. 


n 

OUR  TROOPS  ON  THE  BORDER 


Out  Troops  on.  the  Border 


OUR  TROOPS  ON  THE  BORDER 

ROLLING,  jerky  train  made  up  of  several 
freight  and  one  passenger  car,  the  latter  equal- 
ly divided,  "For  Whites"  and  "For  Negroes" 
— which  in  the  south-west  of  Texas  reads 
"  Mexicans " — dropped  my  baggage  at  Pena  station,  and 
rolled  off  across  the  prairie,  rocking  from  side  to  side 
like  a  line  of  canal -boats  in  a  rough  sea.  It  seemed  like 
the  last  departing  link  of  civilization.  There  was  the 
freight  station  itself ;  beyond  the  track  a  leaky  water-tank, 
a  wooden  store  surrounded  with  piles  of  raw,  foul-smelling 
hides  left  in  exchange  for  tobacco  and  meal,  a  few  thatched 
Mexican  huts,  and  the  prairie.  That  stretched  on  every  side 
to  the  horizon,  level  and  desolate,  and  rising  and  falling  in 
the  heat.  Beneath  was  a  red  sandy  soil  covered  with  cac- 
tus and  bunches  of  gray,  leafless  brush,  marked  with  the 
white  skeletons  of  cattle,  and  overhead  a  sun  at  white  heat, 
and  heavily  moving  buzzards  wheeling  in  circles  or  bal- 
ancing themselves  with  outstretched  wings  between  the  hot 
sky  above  and  the  hot,  red  soil  below. 

Across  this  desert  came  slowly  Trumpeter  Tyler,  of  Troop 
G,  Third  Cavalry,  mounted  on  the  white  horse  which  only 
trumpeters  affect,  and  as  white  as  the  horse  itself  from  the 
dust  of  the  trail.     He  did  not  look  like  the  soldiers  I  had 

2T 


The  West  from  a  Car  -  Window 

seen  at  San  Antonio.  His  blue  sliirt  was  wide  open  at  the 
breast,  his  riding-breeches  were  bare  at  the  knee,  and  the 
cactus  and  chaparral  had  torn  his  blouse  into  rags  and  rib- 
bons. He  pushed  his  wide -brimmed  hat  back  from  his 
forehead  and  breathed  heavily  with  the  heat.  Captain 
Hardie's  camp,  he  panted,  lay  twenty-five  miles  to  the  west. 
He  had  come  from  there  to  see  if  the  field  tents  and  extra 
rations  were  ever  going  to  arrive  from  the  post,  and  as  he 
had  left,  the  captain  had  departed  also  with  a  detachment 
in  search  of  Garza  on  a  fresh  Irail.  "And  he  means  to  fol- 
low it,"  said  Trumpeter  Tyler,  "  if  it  takes  him  into  Mex- 
ico." So  it  was  doubtful  whether  the  visitor  from  the  East 
would  see  the  troop  commander  for  several  days ;  but  if 
he  nevertheless  wished  to  push  on  to  the  camp.  Trumpet- 
er Tyler  would  be  glad  to  show  him  the  way.  Not  only 
would  he  show  him  the  way,  but  he  would  look  over  his 
kit  for  him,  and  select  such  things  as  the  visitor  would 
need  in  the  brush.  Not  such  things  as  the  visitor  might 
want,  but  such  things  as  the  visitor  would  need.  For  in 
the  brush  necessities  become  luxuries,  and  luxuries  are  rel- 
ics of  an  effete  past  and  of  places  where  tradition  tells  of 
pure  water  and  changes  of  raiment,  and,  some  say,  even 
beds.  Neither  Trumpeter  Tyler,  nor  Captain  Francis  H. 
Hardie,  nor  any  of  the  ofiicers  or  men  of  the  eight  troops 
of  cavalry  on  field  service  in  south-west  Texas  had  seen  such 
things  for  three  long  months  of  heat  by  day  and  cold  by 
night,  besides  a  blizzard  of  sleet  and  rain,  that  kept  them 
trembling  with  cold  for  a  fortnight.  And  it  was  for  this 
reason  that  the  visitor  from  the  East  chose  to  see  the 
United  States  troops  as  they  were  in  the  field,  and  to 
tell  about  the  way  they  performed  their  duty  there, 
rather  than  as  he  found  them  at  the  posts,  where  there  is 


TKDMPETER   TTLEB 


Our  Troops  on  the  Border 

at  least  a   canteen   and  papers    not   more    than   a   week 
old. 

Trumpeter  Tyler  ran  his  hand  haughtily  through  what  I 
considered  a  very  sensibly-chosen  assortment  of  indispensa- 
ble things,  and  selected  a  handful  which  he  placed  on  one  side. 

"  You  think  I  had  better  not  take  those  ?"  I  suggested. 

"  That's  all  you  can  take,"  said  the  trooper,  mercilessly. 
"  You  must  think  of  the  horse." 

Then  he  led  the  way  to  the  store,  and  pointed  out  the 
value  of  a  tin  plate,  a  tin  cup,  and  an  iron  knife  and  fork, 
saddle-bags,  leather  leggings  to  keep  off  the  needles  of 
the  cactus,  a  revolver,  and  a  blanket.  It  is  of  interest  to 
give  Trumpeter  Tyler's  own  outfit,  as  it  was  that  of  every 
other  man  in  the  troop,  and  was  all  that  any  one  of  them 
had  had  for  two  months.  He  carried  it  all  on  his  horse, 
and  it  consisted  of  a  blanket,  an  overcoat,  a  carbine,  a  feed- 
bag,  lariat  and  iron  stake,  a  canteen,  saddle-bags  filled  with 
rations  on  one  side  and  a  change  of  under-clothing  on 
the  other,  a  shelter-tent  done  up  in  a  roll,  a  sword,  and  a 
revolver,  with  rounds  of  ammunition  for  it  and  the  carbine 
worn  in  a  belt  around  the  waist.  All  of  this,  with  the  sad- 
dle, weighed  about  eighty  pounds,  and  when  the  weight  of  a 
man  is  added  to  it,  one  can  see  that  it  is  well,  as  Trumpeter 
Tyler  suggested,  to  think  of  the  horse.  Troop  G  had  been  or- 
dered out  for  seven  days'  field  service  on  the  15th  of  Decem- 
ber, and  it  was  then  the  24th  of  January,  and  the  clothes  and 
equipments  they  had  had  with  them  when  they  started  at 
midnight  from  Fort  Macintosh  for  that  week  of  hard  riding 
were  all  they  had  had  with  them  since.  But  the  hard  riding 
had  continued. 

Trumpeter  Tyler  proved  that  day  not  only  my  guide,  but 
a  philosopher,  and  when  night  came  on,  a  friend.     He  was 

81 


The  West  from  a  Car  -  Window 

very  young,  and  came  from  Virginia,  as  his  slow,  lazy  voice 
showed ;  and  he  had  played,  in  his  twenty-three  years,  the 
many  parts  of  photographer,  compositor,  barber,  cook,  mu- 
sician, and  soldier.  He  talked  of  these  different  callings  as 
we  walked  onr  horses  over  the  prairie,  and,  out  of  defer- 
ence to  myself  and  my  errand,  of  writing.  He  was  a  some- 
what general  reader,  and  volunteered  his  opinion  of  the 
works  of  Rudyard  Kipling,  Laura  Jean  Libbey,  Captain 
Charles  King,  and  others  with  confident  familiari':y.  He 
recognized  no  distinctions  in  literature ;  they  had  all  writ- 
ten a  book,  therefore  they  were,  in  consequence,  in  exactly 
the  same  class. 

Of  Mr.  Kipling  he  said,  with  an  appreciative  shake  of  the 
head,  that  "  he  knew  the  private  soldier  from  way  back ;" 
of  Captain  Charles  King,  that  he  wrote  for  the  officers ;  and 
of  Laura  Jean  Libbey,  that  she  was  an  authoress  whose 
books  he  read  "  when  there  really  wasn't  nothing  else  to  do." 
I  doubt  if  one  of  Mr.  Kipling's  own  heroes  could  have  made 
as  able  criticisms. 

When  night  came  on  and  the  stars  came  out,  he  dropped 
the  soldier  shop  and  talked  of  religion  and  astronomy.  The 
former,  he  assured  me  earnestly,  was  much  discussed  by  the 
privates  around  the  fire  at  night,  which  I  could  better  be- 
lieve after  I  saw  how  near  the  stars  get  and  how  wide  the 
world  seems  when  there  is  only  a  blanket  between  you  and 
the  heavens,  and  when  there  is  a  general  impression  prevail- 
ing that  you  are  to  be  shot  at  from  an  ambush  in  the  morn- 
ing. Of  Astronomy  he  showed  a  very  wonderful  knowl- 
edge, and  awakened  my  admiration  by  calling  many  stars 
by  strange  and  ancient  names — an  admiration  which  was 
lessened  abruptly  when  he  confessed  that  he  had  been  fol- 
lowing some  other  than  the  North  Star  for  the  last  three 

32 


Our  Troops  on  the  Border 

miles,  and  that  we  were  lost.  It  was  a  warm  night,  and  I 
was  so  tired  with  the  twenty-five-miles  ride  on  a  Mexican 
saddle — which  is  as  comfortable  as  a  soap-box  turned  edges 
up — that  the  idea  of  lying  out  on  the  ground  did  not  alarm 
me.  But  Trumpeter  Tyler's  honor  was  at  stake.  He  had 
his  reputation  as  a  trailer  to  maintain,  and  he  did  so  ably 
by  lighting  matches  and  gazing  knowingly  at  the  hoof -marks 
of  numerous  cattle,  whose  bones,  I  was  sure,  were  already 
whitening  on  the  plain  or  journeying  East  in  a  refrigerator- 
car,  but  which  he  assured  me  were  still  fresh,  and  must  lead 
to  the  ranch  near  which  the  camp  was  pitched.  And  so, 
after  four  hours'  aimless  trailing  through  the  chaparral, 
when  only  the  thorns  of  the  cactus  kept  us  from  falling 
asleep  off  our  horses,  we  stumbled  into  two  smouldering 
fires,  a  ghostly  row  of  little  shelter-tents,  and  a  tall  figure 
in  a  long  overcoat,  who  clicked  a  carbine  and  cried,  "  Halt, 
and  dismount !" 

I  was  somewhat  doubtful  of  my  reception  in  the  absence 
of  the  captain,  and  waited,  very  wide  awake  now,  while 
they  consulted  together  in  whispers,  and  then  the  sentry 
led  me  to  one  of  the  little  tents  and  kicked  a  sleeping  form 
violently,  and  told  me  to  crawl  in  and  not  to*  mind  reveille 
in  the  morning,  but  to  sleep  on  as  long  as  I  wished.  I  did 
not  know  then  that  I  had  Trumpeter  Tyler's  bed,  and  that 
he  was  sleeping  under  a  wagon,  but  I  was  gratefully  con- 
scious of  his  "bunkie's"  tucking  me  in  as  tenderly  as 
though  I  were  his  son,  and  of  his  not  sharing,  but  giving 
me  more  than  my  share  of  the  blankets.  And  I  went  to 
sleep  so  quickly  that  it  was  not  until  the  morning  that  I 
found  what  I  had  drowsily  concluded  must  be  the  roots  of 
trees  under  me,  to  be  "  bunkie's  "  sabre  and  carbine. 

The  American  private,  as  he  showed  himself  during  the 


The  West  from  a  Car  -  Window 

three  days  in  which  I  was  his  guest,  and  afterwards,  when 
Captain  Hardie  had  returned  and  we  went  scouting  togeth- 
er, proved  to  be  a  most  intelligent  and  unpicturesque  indi- 
vidual. He  was  intelligent,  because  he  had,  as  a  rule,  fol- 
lowed some  other  calling  before  he  entered  the  service,  and 
he  was  not  picturesque,  because  he  looked  on  "  soldiering  " 
merely  as  a  means  of  livelihood,  and  had  little  or  no  patri- 
otic or  sentimental  feeling  concerning  it.  This  latter  was 
not  true  of  the  older  men.  They  had  seen  real  war  either 
during  the  rebellion  or  in  the  Indian  campaigns,  which  are 
much  more  desperate  affairs  than  the  Eastern  mind  appre- 
ciates, and  they  were  fond  of  the  service  and  proud  of  it. 
One  of  the  corporals  in  G  Troop,  for  instance,  had  been 
honorably  discharged  a  year  before  with  the  rank  of  first 
sergeant,  and  had  re-enlisted  as  a  private  rather  than  give 
up  the  service,  of  which  he  found  he  was  more  fond  than 
he  had  imagined  when  he  had  left  it.  And  in  K  Troop 
was  an  even  more  notable  instance  in  a  man  who  had  been 
retired  on  three-fourths  pay,  having  served  his  thirty  years, 
and  who  had  returned  to  the  troop  to  act  as  Captain  Hunt- 
er's **  striker,"  or  man  of  all  work,  and  who  bore  the  mo- 
notony of  the  barracks  and  the  hardships  of  field  service 
rather  than  lose  the  uniform  and  the  feeling  of  esprit  de 
corps  which  thirty  years'  service  had  made  a  necessity  to 
him. 

But  the  raw  recruit,  or  the  man  in  his  third  or  fourth 
year,  as  he  expressed  himself  in  the  different  army  posts 
and  among  the  companies  I  met  on  the  field,  looked  upon 
his  work  from  a  purely  business  point  of  view.  He  had 
been  before  enlistment  a  clerk,  or  a  compositor,  a  cowboy, 
a  day  -  laborer,  painter,  blacksmith,  book-canvasser,  almost 
everything.     In  Captain  Hardie's  troop  all  of  these  were 

84 


Our  Troops  on  the  Border 

represented,  and  the  average  of  intelligence  was  very  high. 
Whether  the  most  intelligent  private  is  the  best  soldier  is 
a  much -discussed  question  which  is  not  to  be  discussed 
here,  but  these  men  were  intelligent  and  were  good  soldiers, 
although  I  am  sure  they  were  too  independent  in  their 
thoughts,  though  not  in  their  actions,  to  have  suited  an 
officer  of  the  English  or  German  army.  That  they  are 
more  carefully  picked  men  than  those  found  in  the  rank 
and  file  of  the  British  army  can  be  proved  from  the  fact 
that  of  those  who  apply  for  enlistment  in  the  United  States 
but  twenty  per  cent,  are  chosen,  while  in  Great  Britain  they 
accept  eighty  and  in  some  years  ninety  per  cent,  of  the  ap- 
plicants. The  small  size  of  our  army  in  comparison,  how- 
ever, makes  this  showing  less  favorable  than  it  at  first 
appears. 

In  camp,  while  the  captain  was  away,  the  privates  sug- 
gested a  lot  of  college  boys  more  than  any  other  body  of 
individuals.  A  few  had  the  college  boy's  delight  in  shirk- 
ing their  work,  and  would  rejoice  over  having  had  a  dirty 
carbine  pass  inspection  on  account  of  a  shining  barrel,  as 
the  Sophomore  boasts  of  having  gained  a  high  marking  for 
a  translation  he  had  read  from  a  crib.  They  had  also  the 
college  boy's  songs,  and  his  trick  of  giving  nicknames,  and 
his  original  and  sometimes  clever  slang,  and  his  satisfaction 
in  expressing  violent  liking  or  dislike  for  those  in  authority 
over  him — in  the  one  case  tutors  and  professors,  and  in  the 
other  sergeants  and  captains.  Their  one  stupid  hitch,  in 
which  the  officers  shared  to  some  extent,  was  in  re-enforcing 
all  they  said  with  profanity ;  but  as  soldiers  have  done  this, 
apparently,  since  the  time  of  Shakespeare's  Seven  Ages,  it 
must  be  considered  an  inherited  characteristic.  Their  fun 
around  the  camp  fire  at  night  was  rough,  but  it  was  some- 


The  West  from  a  Car  -  Window 

times  clever,  though  it  was  open  to  the  objection  that  a 
clever  story  never  failed  of  three  or  four  repetitions.  The 
greatest  successes  were  those  in  which  the  officers,  always 
of  some  other  troop,  were  the  butts.  One  impudent  "  crui- 
tie  "  made  himself  famous  in  a  night  by  improvising  an  in- 
terview between  himself  and  a  troop  commander  who  had 
met  him  that  day  as  he  was  steering  a  mule  train  across 
the  prairie. 

"  '  How  are  you  V  said  he  to  m3.  *  You're  one  of  Cap- 
tain Hardie's  men,  ain't  you  ?     I'm  Captain .' 

"  '  Clad  to  know  you,  captain,'  said  I.  '  I've  read  about 
you  in  the  papers.'  " 

This  was  considered  a  magnificent  stroke  by  the  men, 
who  thought  the  captain  in  question  rather  too  fond  of 
sending  in  reports  concerning  himself  to  headquarters. 

" '  Well,'  says  he,  *  when  do  you  think  we're  going  to 

catch  this Garza  ?    As  for  me,'  says 

he, '  I'm  that tired  of  the  whole 

business  that  I'm  willing  to  give  up  my  job  to 

any fool  that  will  take  it ' 

"  *  Well,  old  man,'  says  I,  '  I'd  be  glad  to  relieve  you,' 

says  I,  'but  I'd  a sight   rather  serve   under  Captain 

Hardie  than  captain  such  a  lot  of  regular 

coffee-coolers  as  yov  yG  got  under  you.'  " 

The  audacity  of  this  entirely  fictitious  conversation  was 
what  recommended  it  tc  the  men.  I  only  reproduce  it  here 
as  showing  their  idea  of  humor.  An  even  greater  success 
was  that  of  a  stolid  German,  who  related  a  true  incident  of 
life  at  Fort  Clarke,  where  the  men  were  singing  one  night 
around  the  fire,  when  the  colcTiel  passed  by,  and  ordered 
them  into  the  tents,  and  to  stop    hat noise. 

"And  den," continued  the  soldier,  "he  come  acrost  Cab- 


V 


CAPTAIN   FRANCIS   H.  HARDIE,  G   TROOP,  THIRD   UNITED   STATES   CAVALRY 


Our  Troops  on  the  Border 

ding ,  sitting  in  frond  of  his  tent,  and  he  says  to  him 

quick  like  that,  '  You  ged  into  your  tent,  too."*  That's  what 
he  said  to  him,  '  You  ged  into  your  tent,  too.''  " 

It  is  impossible  to  imagine  the  exquisite  delight  that  this 
simple  narrative  gave.  The  idea  of  a  real  troop  command- 
er having  been  told  to  get  into  his  tent  just  like  a  common 
soldier  brought  the  tears  to  the  men's  eyes,  and  the  success 
of  his  story  so  turned  the  German's  head  that  he  continued 
repeating  to  himself  and  to  any  one  he  met  for  several  days : 
"  That's  what  he  said,  *  You  ged  into  your  tent,  too.'  That's 
what  he  said." 

Captain  Hardie  rode  his  detachment  into  camp  on  the 
third  day,  with  horses  so  tired  that  they  tried  to  lie  down 
whenever  there  was  a  halt ;  and  a  horse  must  be  very  tired 
before  he  will  do  that.  Captain  Hardie's  riding-breeches 
were  held  together  by  the  yellow  stripes  at  their  sides,  and 
his  hands  were  raw  and  swollen  with  the  marks  of  the  cac- 
tus needles,  and  his  face  burned  and  seared  to  a  dull  red. 
I  had  heard  of  him  through  the  papers  and  from  the  officers 
at  headquarters  as  the  "  Riding  Captain,"  and  as  the  one 
who  had  during  the  Garza  campaign  been  most  frequently 
in  the  saddle,  and  least  given  to  sending  in  detailed  reports 
of  his  own  actions.  He  had  been  absolutely  alone  for  the 
two  months  he  had  been  in  the  field.  He  was  the  father  of 
his  men,  as  all  troop  commanders  must  be ;  he  had  to  doc- 
tor them  when  they  were  ill,  to  lend  them  money  when  the 
paymaster  lost  his  way  in  the  brush,  to  write  their  letters, 
and  to  listen  to  their  grievances,  and  explain  that  it  was  not 
because  they  were  not  good  soldiers  that  they  could  not  go 
out  and  risk  being  shot  on  this  or  that  particular  scouting 
party — he  could  do  all  this  for  them,  but  he  could  not  talk 
to  them.     He  had  to  sit  in  front  of  his  own  camp  fire  and 


The  West  from  a  Car  -  Window 

hear  them  laughing  around  theirs,  and  consider  the  loneli- 
ness of  south-western  Texas,  which  is  the  loneliness  of  the 
ocean  at  night.  He  could  talk  to  his  Mexican  guides,  be- 
cause they,  while  they  were  under  him,  were  not  of  his 
troop,  and  I  believe  it  was  this  need  to  speak  to  some  liv- 
ing soul  that  taught  Captain  Hardie  to  know  Spanish  as 
well  as  he  did,  and  much  more  quickly  than  the  best  of  tu- 
tors could  have  done  in  a  year  at  the  post. 

The  Eastern  mind  does  not  occupy  itself  much  with  these 
guardians  of  its  borders  ;  its  idea  of  the  soldier  is  the  com- 
fortable, clubable  fellow  they  meet  in  Washington  and  New 
York,  whose  red,  white,  and  blue  button  is  all  that  marks 
him  from  the  other  clubable,  likable  men  about  him.  But 
they  ought  to  know  more  and  feel  more  for  these  equally 
likable  men  of  the  border  posts,  whose  only  knowledge  of 
club  life  is  the  annual  bill  for  dues,  one  of  which,  with  su- 
preme irony,  arrived  in  Captain  Hardie's  mail  at  a  time 
when  we  had  only  bacon  three  times  a  day,  and  nothing 
but  alkali  water  to  silence  the  thirst  that  followed.  To  a 
young  man  it  is  rather  pathetic  to  see  another  young  man, 
with  a  taste  and  fondness  for  the  pleasant  things  of  this 
world,  pull  out  his  watch  and  hold  it  to  the  camp  fire  and 
say,  "  Just  seven  o'clock ;  people  in  God's  country  are  sit- 
ting down  to  dinner."  And  then  a  little  later:  "And  now 
it's  eight  o'clock,  and  they  are  going  to  the  theatres.  What 
is  there  at  the  theatres  now  ?"  And  when  I  recalled  the 
plays  running  in  New  York  when  I  left  it,  the  ofiicers  would 
select  which  one  they  would  go  to,  with  much  grave  delib- 
eration, and  then  crawl  in  between  two  blankets  and  find 
the  most  comfortable  angle  at  which  a  McClellan  saddle 
will  make  a  pillow. 

The  Garza  campaign  is  only  of  interest  here  as  it  shows 

40 


Our  Troops  on  the  Border 

the  work  of  the  United  States  troops  who  were  engaged  in 
it.  As  for  Caterino  E.  Garza  himself,  he  may,  by  the  time 
this  appears  in  print,  have  been  made  President  of  Mexico, 
which  is  most  improbable ;  or  have  been  captured  in  the 
brush,  which  is  more  improbable ;  or  he  may  have  disap- 
peared from  public  notice  altogether.  It  is  only  of  interest 
to  the  Eastern  man  to  know  that  a  Mexican  ranch-owner 
and  sometime  desperado  and  politician  living  in  south-west 
Texas  proclaimed  a  revolution  against  the  Government  of 
Mexico,  and  that  that  Government  requested  ours  to  see 
that  the  neutrality  laws  existing  between  the  two  countries 
were  not  broken  by  the  raising  of  troops  on  our  side  of  the 
Rio  Grande  River,  and  that  followers  of  this  Garcia  should 
not  be  allowed  to  cross  through  Texas  on  their  way  to  Mex- 
ico. This  our  Government,  as  represented  by  the  Depart- 
ment of  Texas,  which  has  its  headquarters  at  San  Antonio, 
showed  its  willingness  to  do  by  sending  at  first  two  troops 
of  cavalry,  and  later  six  more,  into  darkest  Texas,  with  or- 
ders to  take  prisoners  any  bands  of  revolutionists  they 
might  find  there ;  and  to  arrest  all  individual  revolutionists 
with  a  warrant  sworn  to  by  two  witnesses.  The  country 
into  which  these  eight  troops  were  sent  stretches  for  three 
hundred  and  sixty  miles  along  the  Rio  Grande  River,  where 
it  separates  Mexico  from  Texas,  and  runs  back  a  hundred 
and  more  miles  east,  making  of  this  so-called  Garza  territory 
an  area  of  five  hundred  square  miles. 

This  particular  country  is  the  back-yard  of  the  world.  It 
is  to  the  rest  of  the  West  what  the  ash-covered  lots  near 
High  Bridge  are  to  New  York.  It  is  the  country  which 
led  General  Sheridan  to  say  that  if  he  owned  both  places, 
he  would  rent  Texas  and  live  in  hell.  It  is  the  strip  of 
country  over  which  we  actually  went  to  war  with  Mexico, 


The  West  from  a  Car  -  Window 

and  which  gave  General  Sherman  the  opportunity  of  malt- 
ing the  epigramme,  which  no  one  who  has  not  seen  the 
utter  desolateness  of  the  land  can  justly  value,  that  we 
should  go  to  war  with  Mexico  again,  and  force  her  to  take 
\t  back. 

It  is  a  country  where  there  are  no  roses,  but  where  every- 
thing that  grows  has  a  thorn.  Where  the  cattle  die  of  star- 
vation, and  where  the  troops  had  to  hold  up  the  solitary 
train  that  passes  over  it  once  a  day,  in  true  road-agent  fash- 
ion, to  take  the  water  from  its  boilers  that  their  horses 
might  not  drop  for  lack  of  it.  It  is  a  country  where  the 
sun  blinds  and  scorches  at  noon,  and  where  the  dew  falls 
like  a  cold  rain  at  night,  and  where  one  shivers  in  an  over- 
coat at  breakfast,  and  rides  without  coat  or  waistcoat  and 
panting  with  the  heat  the  same  afternoon.  Where  there  are 
no  trees,  nor  running  streams,  nor  rocks  nor  hills,  but  just 
an  ocean  of  gray  chaparral  and  white,  chalky  canons  or  red, 
dusty  trails.  If  you  leave  this  trail  for  fifty  yards,  you 
may  wander  for  twenty  miles  before  you  come  to  water  or 
a  ranch  or  another  trail,  and  by  that  time  the  chaparral  and 
cactus  will  have  robbed  you  of  your  clothing,  and  left  in 
its  place  a  covering  of  needles,  which  break  when  one  at- 
tempts to  draw  them  out,  and  remain  in  the  flesh  to  fester 
and  swell  the  skin,  and  leave  it  raw  and  tender  for  a  week. 
This  country,  it  is  almost  a  pleasure  to  say,  is  America's 
only  in  its  possession.  No  white  men,  or  so  few  that  they 
are  not  as  common  as  century-plants,  live  in  it.  It  is  Mex- 
ican in  its  people,  its  language,  and  its  mode  of  life.  The 
few  who  inhabit  its  wilderness  are  ranch-owners,  and  their 
shepherds  and  cowboys ;  and  a  ranch,  which  means  a  store 
and  six  or  seven  thatched  adobe  houses  around  it,  is  at  the 
nearest  three  miles  from  the  next  ranch,  and  on  an  average 

42 


Our  Troops  on  the  Border 

twenty  miles.  As  a  rule,  they  move  farther  away  the  long- 
er you  ride  towards  them. 

Into  this  foreign  country  of  five  hundred  square  miles 
the  eight  United  States  cavalry  troops  of  forty  men  each 
and  two  companies  of  infantry  were  sent  to  find  Garza  and 
his  followers.  The  only  means  by  which  a  man  or  horses 
or  cows  can  be  tracked  in  this  desert  is  by  the  foot  or  hoof 
prints  which  they  may  leave  in  the  sandy  soil  as  they  fol- 
low the  trails  already  made  or  make  fresh  ones.  To  follow 
these  trails  it  is  necessary  to  have  as  a  guide  a  man  born  in 
the  brush,  who  has  trailed  cattle  for  a  livelihood.  The 
Mexican  Government  supplied  the  troops  with  some  of 
their  own  people,  who  did  not  know  the  particular  country 
into  which  they  were  sent,  but  who  could  follow  a  trail  in 
any  country.  One  or  two  of  these,  sometimes  none,  went 
with  each  troop.  What  our  Government  should  have  done 
was  to  supply  each  troop  commander  with  five  or  six 
of  these  men,  who  could  have  gone  out  in  search  of 
trails,  and  reported  at  the  camp  whenever  they  had 
found  a  fresh  one.  By  this  means  the  troops  could  have 
been  saved  hundreds  of  miles  of  unnecessary  marching 
and  countermarching  on^  "  false  alarms,"  and  the  Gov- 
ernment much  money,  as  the  campaign  in  that  event 
would  have  been  brought  much  more  rapidly  to  a  con- 
clusion. 

But  the  troop  commanders  in  the  field  had  no  such  aids. 
They  had  to  ride  forth  whenever  so  ordered  to  do  by  the 
authorities  at  headquarters,  some  two  hundred  miles  from 
the  scene  of  the  action,  who  had  in  turn  received  their  in- 
formation from  the  Mexican  general  on  the  other  side  of 
the  Rio  Grande.  This  is  what  made  doing  their  duty,  as 
represented  by  obeying  orders,  such  a  difficult  thing  to 


The  West  from  a  Car  -  Window 

the  troops  in  the  Garza  territory.  They  knew  before  they 
saddled  their  horses  that  they  were  going  out  on  a  wild- 
goose  chase  to  wear  out  their  horses  and  their  own  pati- 
ence, and  to  accomplish  nothing  beyond  furnishing  Garza's 
followers  with  certain  satisfaction  in  seeing  a  large  body 
of  men  riding  solemnly  through  a  dense  underbrush  in  a 
blinding  sun  to  find  a  trail  which  a  Mexican  general  had 
told  an  American  general  would  be  sure  to  lead  them  to 
Garza,  and  news  of  which  had  reached  them  a  week  after 
whoever  had  made  the  trail  had  passed  over  it.  They 
could  imagine,  as  they  trotted  in  a  long,  dusty  line  through 
the  chaparral,  as  conspicuous  marks  on  the  plain  as  a  prai- 
rie-wagon, that  Garza  or  his  men  were  watching  them  from 
under  a  clump  of  cactus  on  some  elevation  in  the  desert, 
and  that  he  would  say  : 

"  Ah  !  the  troops  are  out  again,  I  see.  Who  is  it  to-day 
— Hardie,  Chase,  or  Hunter?  Lend  me  your  field -glass. 
Ah !  it  is  Hardie.  He  is  a  good  rider.  I  hope  he  will  not 
get  a  sunstroke." 

And  then  they  would  picture  how  the  revolutionists  would 
continue  the  smoking  of  their  cornstalk  cigarettes  and  the 
drinking  of  the  smuggled  muscal. 

This  is  not  an  exaggerated  picture.  A  man  could  lie 
hidden  in  this  brush  and  watch  the  country  on  every  side 
of  him,  and  see  each  of  the  few  living  objects  which  might 
pass  over  it  in  a  day,  as  easily  as  he  could  note  the  approach 
of  a  three-masted  schooner  at  sea.  And  even  though  troops 
came  directly  towards  him,  he  had  but  to  lie  flat  in  the 
brush  within  twenty  feet  of  them,  and  they  would  not  know 
it.  It  would  be  as  easy  to  catch  Jack  the  Ripper  with  a 
Lord-Mayor's  procession  as  Garza  with  a  detachment  of  cav- 
alry, unless  they  stumbled  upon  him  by  luck,  or  unless  he 

48 


Our  Troops  on  the  Border 

had  with  him  so  many  men  that  their  trail  could  be  followed 
at  a  gallop.  As  a  matter  of  fact  and  history,  the  Garza 
movement  was  broken  up  in  the  first  three  weeks  of  its  in- 
ception by  the  cavalry  and  the  Texas  Rangers  and  the  dep- 
uty sheriffs,  who  rode  after  the  large  bodies  of  men  and 
scattered  them.  After  that  it  was  merely  a  chase  after  little 
bands  of  from  three  to  a  dozen  men,  who  travelled  by  night 
and  slept  by  day  in  their  race  towards  the  river,  or,  when 
met  there  by  the  Mexican  soldiers,  in  their  race  back  again. 
The  fact  that  every  inhabitant  of  the  ranches  and  every 
Mexican  the  troops  met  was  a  secret  sympathizer  with  Gar- 
za was  another  and  most  important  difficulty  in  the  way  of 
his  pursuers.  And  it  was  trying  to  know  that  the  barking 
of  the  dogs  of  a  ranch  was  not  yet  out  of  ear-shot  before  a 
vaquero  was  scuttling  off  through  the  chaparral  to  tell  the 
hiding  revolutionists  that  the  troops  were  on  their  way, 
and  which  way  they  were  coming. 

And  so,  while  it  is  no  credit  to  soldiers  to  do  their  duty, 
it  is  creditable  to  them  when  they  do  their  duty  knowing 
that  it  is  futile,  and  that  some  one  has  blundered.  If  a  fire 
company  in  New  York  City  were  ordered  out  on  a  false 
alarm  every  day  for  three  months,  knowing  that  it  was  not 
a  fire  to  which  they  were  going,  but  that  some  one  had 
wanted  a  messenger-boy,  and  rung  up  an  engine  by  mis- 
take, the  alertness  and  fidelity  of  those  firemen  would  be 
most  severely  tested.  That  is  why  I  admired,  and  why  the 
readers  in  the  East  should  admire,  the  discipline  and  the 
faithfulness  with  which  the  cavalry  on  the  border  of  Texas  did 
their  duty  the  last  time  Trumpeter  Tyler  sounded  "Boots 
and  Saddles,"  and  went  forth  as  carefully  equipped,  and  as 
eager  and  hopeful  that  this  time  meant  fighting,  as  they  did 
the  first. 

47 


The  We8t  from  a  Car  -  Window 

Their  life  in  the  field  was  as  near  to  nature,  and,  as  far  as 
comforts  were  concerned,  to  the  beasts  of  the  field,  as  men 
often  come.  A  tramp  in  the  Eastern  States  lives  like  a  re- 
spectable householder  in  comparison.  Suppose,  to  better 
understand  it,  that  you  were  ordered  to  leave  your  house  or 
flat  or  hall  bedroom  and  live  in  the  open  air  for  two  months, 
and  that  you  were  limited  in  your  selection  of  what  you 
wished  to  carry  with  you  to  the  weight  of  eighty  pounds. 
You  would  find  it  diflficult  to  adjust  this' eighty  pounds  in 
such  a  way  that  it  would  include  any  comforts ;  certainly, 
there  would  be  no  luxuries.  The  soldiers  of  Troop  G,  be- 
sides the  things  before  enumerated,  were  given  for  a  day's 
rations  a  piece  of  bacon  as  large  as  your  hand,  as  much  cof- 
fee as  would  fill  three  large  cups,  and  enough  fiour  to  make 
five  or  six  heavy  biscuits,  which  they  justly  called  "  'dobes," 
after  the  clay  bricks  of  which  Mexican  adobe  houses  are 
made.  In  camp  they  received  potatoes  and  beans.  All  of 
these  things  were  of  excellent  quality  and  were  quite  satisfy- 
ing, as  the  work  sapplies  an  appetite  to  meet  them.  This  is 
not  furnished  by  the  Government,  and  costs  it  nothing,  but 
it  is  about  the  best  article  in  the  line  of  sustenance  that  the 
soldier  receives.  He  sleeps  on  a  blanket  with  his  "  bunkie," 
and  with  his  "  bunkie's"  blanket  over  him.  If  he  is  cold,  he 
can  build  the  fire  higher,  and  doze  in  front  of  that.  He 
rides,  as  a  rule,  from  seven  in  the  morning  to  five  in  the 
afternoon,  without  a  halt  for  a  noonday  meal,  and  he  gen- 
erally gets  to  sleep  by  eight  or  nine.  The  rest  of  the  time 
he  is  in  the  saddle.  Each  man  carries  a  frying-pan  about 
as  large  as  a  plate,  with  an  iron  handle,  which  folds  over 
and  is  locked  in  between  the  pan  and  another  iron  plate 
that  closes  upon  it.  He  does  his  own  cooking  in  this,  un- 
less he  happens  to  be  the  captain's  "  striker,"  when  he  has 

48 


THE   MEXICAN    GUIDE 


Our  Troops  on  the  Border 

double  duty.  He  is  so  equipped  and  so  taught  that  he  is 
an  entirely  independent  organization  in  himself,  and  he  and 
his  horse  eat  and  sleep  and  work  as  a  unit,  and  are  as  much 
and  as  little  to  the  rest  of  the  troop  as  one  musket  and  bay- 
onet are  to  the  line  of  them  when  a  company  salutes. 

We  had  for  a  guide  one  of  the  most  picturesque  ruffians 
I  ever  met.  He  was  a  Mexican  murderer  to  the  third  or 
fourth  degree,  as  Captain  Hardie  explained  when  I  first 
met  him,  and  had  been  liberated  from  a  jail  in  Mexico  in 
order  that  he  might  serve  his  country  on  this  side  of  the 
river  as  a  guide,  and  that  his  wonderful  powers  as  a  trailer 
might  not  be  wasted. 

He  rejoiced  in  his  liberty  from  iron  bars  and  a  bare  mud 
floor,  and  showed  his  gratitude  in  the  most  untiring  vigil- 
ance and  in  the  endurance  of  what  seemed  to  the  Eastern 
mind  the  greatest  discomforts.  He  always  rode  in  advance 
of  the  column,  and  with  his  eyes  wandering  from  the  trail 
to  the  horizon  and'  towards  the  backs  of  distant  moving 
cattle,  and  again  to  the  trail  at  his  feet.  Whenever  he  saw 
any  one — and  he  could  discover  a  suspected  revolutionist 
long  before  any  one  else — the  first  intimation  the  rest  of 
the  scouting  party  would  get  of  it  was  his  pulHng  out  his 
Winchester  and  disappearing  on  a  gallop  into  the  chaparral. 
He  scorned  the  assistance  of  the  troop,  and  when  we  came 
up  to  him  again,  after  a  wild  dash  through  the  brush,  which 
left  our  hats  and  portions  of  our  clothing  to  mark  our  way, 
we  would  find  him  with  his  prisoner's  carbine  tucked  under 
his  arm,  and  beaming  upon  him  with  a  smile  of  wicked  sat- 
isfaction. 

As  a  trailer  he  showed,  as  do  many  of  these  guides,  what 
seemed  to  be  a  gift  of  second-sight  cultivated  to  a  super- 
natural degree.     He  would  say  :  "  Five  horses  have  passed 

51 


The  West  from  a  Car  -  Window 

ahead  of  us  about  an  hour  since.  Two  are  led  and  one  has 
two  men  on  his  back,  and  there  is  one  on  each  of  the  other 
two ;"  which,  when  we  caught  up  to  them  at  the  first  wa- 
tering-place, would  prove  to  be  true.  Or  he  would  tell  us 
that  troops  or  Rangers  to  such  a  number  had  crossed  the 
trail  at  some  time  three  or  four  days  before,  that  a  certain 
mark  was  made  by  a  horse  wandering  without  a  rider,  or 
that  another  had  been  made  by  a  pony  so  many  years  old — 
all  of  which  statements  would  be  verified  later.  But  it  was 
as  a  would-be  belligerent  that  he  shone  most  picturesquely. 
When  he  saw  a  thin  column  of  smoke  rising  from  a  canon 
where  revolutionists  were  supposed  to  be  in  camp,  or  came 
upon  several  armed  men  riding  towards  us  and  too  close  to 
escape,  his  face  would  light  up  with  a  smile  of  the  most 
wicked  content  and  delight,  and  he  would  beam  like  a  can. 
nibal  before  a  feast  as  he  pumped  out  the  empty  cartridges 
and  murmured,  "  Buena !  buena !  buena  I"  with  rolling  eyes 
and  an  anticipatory  smack  of  the  lips. 

But  he  was  generally  disappointed ;  the  smoke  would 
come  from  a  shepherd's  fire,  and  the  revolutionists  would 
point  to  the  antelope-skins  under  their  saddles,  which  had 
been  several  months  in  drying,  and  swear  they  were  hunt- 
ers, and  call  upon  the  saints  to  prove  that  Ihey  had  never 
heard  of  such  a  man  as  Garza,  and  that  carbines,  revolvers, 
and  knives  were  what  every  antelope-hunter  needed  for  self- 
protection.  At  which  the  Mexican  would  show  his  teeth 
and  roll  his  eyes  with  such  a  cruel  show  of  disbelief  that 
they  would  beg  the  "good  captain"  to  protect  them  and 
let  them  go,  which,  owing  to  the  fact  that  one  cannot  get  a 
warrant  and  a  notary  public  in  the  brush,  as  the  regulations 
require,  he   would,  after   searching   them,  be   compelled 

to  do. 

08 


Our  Troops  on  the  Border 

And  then  the  Mexican,  who  had  expected  to  see  them 
hung  to  a  tree  until  they  talked  or  died,  as  would  have  been 
done  in  his  own  free  republic,  would  sigh  bitterly,  and  trot 


THIRD  CAVALRY  TROOPERS — SEARCHING  A  SDSPECTED  REVOLUTIONIST 


off  patiently  and  hopefully  after  more.  Hope  was  especial- 
ly invented  for  soldiers  and  fishermen.  One  thought  of  this 
when  one  saw  the  spirit  of  the  men  as  they  stole  out  at  night, 
holding  up  their  horses'  heads  to  make  them  step  lightly,  and 
dodging  the  lights  of  the  occasional  ranches,  and  startling 
some  shepherd  sleeping  by  the  trail  into  the  belief  that  a  file 

68 


The  West  from  a  Car  -  Window 

of  ghosts  had  passed  by  him  in  the  mist.  They  were  always 
sure  that  this  time  it  meant  something,  and  if  the  captain 
made  a  dash  from  the  trail,  and  pounded  with  his  fist  on 
the  door  of  a  ranch  where  lights  shone  when  lights  should 
have  been  put  out,  the  file  of  ghosts  that  had  stretched  back 
two  hundred  yards  into  the  night  in  an  instant  became  a 
close-encircling  line  of  eager,  open-eyed  boys,  with  carbines 
free  from  the  sling -belts,  covering  the  windows  and  the 
grudgingly  opened  door.  They  never  grew  weary ;  they 
rode  on  many  days  from  nine  at  night  to  five  the  next  af- 
ternoon, with  but  three  hours'  sleep.  On  one  scouting  ex- 
pedition Tyler  and  myself  rode  one  hundred  and  ten  miles 
in  thirty-three  hours ;  the  average,  however,  was  from  thir- 
ty to  fifty  miles  a  day ;  but  the  hot,  tired  eyes  of  the  en- 
listed men  kept  wandering  over  the  burning  prairie  as 
though  looking  for  gold;  and  if  on  the  ocean  of  cactus 
they  saw  a  white  object  move,  or  a  sombrero  drop  from 
sight,  or  a  horse  with  a  saddle  on  its  back,  they  would 
pass  the  word  forward  on  the  instant,  and  wait  breathless- 
ly until  the  captain  saw  it  too. 

I  asked  some  of  them  what  they  thought  of  when  they 
were  riding  up  to  these  wandering  bands  of  revolutionists, 
and  they  told  me  that  from  the  moment  the  captain  had 
shouted  "  Howmp !"  which  is  the  only  order  he  gives  for 
any  and  every  movement,  they  had  made  themselves  cor- 
porals, had  been  awarded  the  medal  of  honor,  and  had 
spent  the  thirty  thousand  dollar  reward  for  Garza's  capture. 
And  so  if  any  one  is  to  take  Garza,  and  the  hunting  of  the 
Snark  is  to  be  long  continued  in  Texas,  I  hope  it  will  be 
G  Troop,  Third  Cavalry,  that  brings  the  troublesome  little 
wretch  into  camp ;  not  because  they  have  worked  so  much 
harder  than  the  others,  but  because  they  had  no  tents,  as 

54 


Our  Troops  on  the  Border 

did  the  others,  and  no  tinned  goods,  and  no  pay  for  two 
months,  and  because  they  had  such  an  abundance  of  enthu- 
siasm and  hope,  and  the  good  cheer  that  does  not  come 
from  the  commissariat  department  or  the  canteen. 


m 

AT  A  NEW  MINING  CAMP 


At  a  New  Mining  Camp 


m 

AT   A    NEW    MINING    CAMP 

\Y  only  ideas  of  a  new  mining  camp  "before  I 
visited  Creede  were  derived  from  an  early  and 
eager  study  of  Bret  Harte.  Not  that  I  ex- 
pected to  see  one  of  his  mining  camps  or  his 
own  people  when  I  visited  Creede,  but  the  few  ideas  of 
miners  ^nd  their  ways  and  manners  that  I  had  were 
those  which  be  had  given  me.  I  should  have  liked,  al- 
though I  did  not  expect  it,  to  see  the  outcasts  of  Poker 
Flat  before  John  Oakhurst,  in  his  well-fitting  frock-coat, 
had  left  the  outfit,  and  Yuba  Bill  pulling  up  his  horses  in 
front  of  the  Lone  Star  saloon,  where  Colonel  Starbuckle, 
with  one  elbow  resting  on. the  bar,  and  with  his  high  white 
hat  tipped  to  one  side,  waited  to  do  him  honor.  I  do  not 
know  that  Bret  Harte  ever  said  that  Colonel  Starbuckle 
had  a  white  hat,  but  I  always  pictured  him  in  it,  and  with 
a  black  stock.  I  wanted  to  hear  people  say,  "  Waal,  stran- 
ger," and  to  see  auburn-haired  giants  in  red  shirts,  with 
bags  of  gold-dust  and  nuggets  of  silver,  and  much  should  I 
have  liked  to  meet  Rose  of  Touloumme.  But  all  that  I 
found  at  Creede  which  reminded  me  of  these  miners  and 
gamblers  and  the  chivalric  extravagant  days  of  '49  were  a 
steel  pan,  like  a  frying-pan  without  a  handle,  which  I  rec- 
ognized with  a  thrill  as  the  pan  for  washing  gold,  and  a 

59 


The  West  from,  a  Car  -  Window 

pick  in  the  corner  of  a  cabin ;  and  once  when  a  man  hailed 
me  as  "  Pardner  "  on  the  mountain-side,  and  asked  ''  What 
luck?"  The  men  and  the  scenes  in  this  new  silver  camp 
showed  what  might  have  existed  in  the  more  glorious  sun- 
shine of  California,  but  they  were  dim  and  commonplace, 
and  lacked  the  sharp,  clear-cut  personality  of  Bret  Harte's 
men  and  scenes.     They  were  like  the  negative  of  a  photo- 


HINING  CAMP  ON  THE  RANGE  ABOVE  CREEDE 


graph  which  has  been  under-exposed,  and  which  no  amount 
of  touching  up  will  make  clear.  So  I  will  not  attempt  to 
touch  them  up. 

When  I  first  read  of  Creede,  when  I  was  so  ignorant  con- 
cerning it  that  I  pronounced  the  final  e,  it  was  on  the  date 
line  of  a  newspaper,  and  made  no  more  impression  upon 
me  then  than  though  it  were  printed  simply  Creede.  But 
after  I  had  reached  Denver,  and  even  before,  when  I  had 
begun  to  find  my  way  about  the  Western  newspapers,  it 
seemed  to  be  spelled  Creede.     In  Denver  it  faced  you 


At  a  New  Mining  Camp 

everywhere  from  bill-boards,  flaunted  at  you  from  canvas 
awnings  stretched  across  the  streets,  and  stared  at  you  from 
daily  papers  in  type  an  inch  long;  the  shop-windows,  ac- 
cording to  their  several  uses,  advertised  "  Photographs  of 
Creede,"  "  The  only  correct  map  of  Creede,"  "  Specimen 
ore  from  the  Holy  Moses  Mine,  Creede,"  "  Only  direct  route 
to  Creede,"  "  Scalp  tickets  to  Creede,"  "  Wanted,  $500  to 
start  drug-store  in  Creede,"  "  Xon  will  need  boots  at  Creede, 

and  you  can  get  them  at 's."     The  gentlemen  in  the 

Denver  Club  talk  Creede  ;  the  people  in  the  hotels  dropped 
the  word  so  frequently  that  you  wondered  if  they  were  not 
all  just  going  there,  or  were  not  about  to  write  Creede  on 
the  register.  It  was  a  common  language,  starting-point, 
and  interest.  It  was  as  momentous  as  the  word  Johnstown 
during  the  week  after  the  flood. 

The  train  which  carried  me  there  held  stern,  important- 
looking  old  gentlemen,  who,  the  porter  told  me  in  an  awed 
whisper,  were  one-third  or  one-fifteenth  owners  of  the  Pot- 
luck  Mine ;  young  men  in  Astrakhan  fur  coats  and  new 
top  boots  laced  at  the  ankles,  trying  to  look  desperate  and 
rough  ;  grub-stake  prospectors,  with  bedding,  pick,  and  ra- 
tions in  a  roll  on  the  seat  beside  them ;  more  young  men, 
who  naively  assured  me  when  they  found  that  I,  too,  was 
going  to  Creede,  and  not  in  top-boots  and  revolvers  and  a 
flannel  shirt,  that  they  had  never  worn  such  things  before, 
and  really  had  decent  clothes  at  home ;  also  women  who 
smoked  with  the  men  and  passed  their  flasks  down  the 
length  of  the  car,  and  two  friendless  little  girls,  of  whom 
every  one  except  the  women,  who  seemed  to  recognize  a 
certain  fitness  of  things,  took  unremitting  care.  Every  one 
on  the  crowded  train  showed  the  effect  of  the  magnet  that 
was  drawing  him — he  was  restless,  impatient,  and  excited. 

61 


The  West  from  a  Car  -  Window 

Half  of  them  did  not  know  what  they  were  going  to  find  ; 
and  the  other  half,  who  had  already  taken  such  another 
journey  to  Leadville,  Aspen,  or  Cripple  Creek,  knew  only 
too  well,  and  yet  hoped  that  this  time — 

Creede  lies  in  a  gully  between  two  great  mountains.  In 
the  summer  the  mountain  streams  wash  down  into  this  gully 
and  turn  it  into  a  little  river ;  but  with  the  recklessness  of 
true  gamblers,  the  people  who  came  to  Creede  built  their 
stores,  houses,  and  saloons  as  near  the  base  of  the  great 
sides  of  the  valley  as  they  could,  and  if  the  stream  comes 
next  summer,  as  it  has  done  for  hundreds  of  years  before, 
it  will  carry  with  it  fresh  pine  houses  and  log  huts  instead 
of  twigs  and  branches. 

The  train  stopped  at  the  opening  of  this  gully,  and  its 
passengers  jumped  out  into  two  feet  of  mud  and  snow. 
The  ticket  and  telegraph  office  on  one  side  of  the  track 
were  situated  in  a  freight  car  with  windows  and  doors 
cut  out  of  it,  and  with  the  familiar  blue  and  white  sign  of 
the  Western  Union  nailed  to  one  end ;  that  station  was 
typical  of  the  whole  town  in  its  rawness,  and  in  the  tem- 
porary and  impromptu  air  of  its  inhabitants.  If  you  looked 
back  at  the  road  over  which  you  had  just  come,  you  saw 
the  beautiful  circle  of  the  Wagon  Wheel  Gap,  a  chain  of 
magnificent  mountains  white  with  snow,  picked  with  hun- 
dreds of  thousands  of  pine-trees  so  high  above  one  that 
they  looked  like  little  black  pins.  The  clouds,  less  white 
than  the  snow,  lay  packed  in  between  the  peaks  of  the 
range,  or  drifted  from  one  to  another  to  find  a  resting- 
place,  and  the  sun,  beating  down  on  both  a  blinding  glare, 
showed  other  mountains  and  other  snow-capped  ranges  for 
fifty  miles  beyond.  This  is  at  the  opening  of  Willow 
Gulch  into  which  Creede  has  hurried  and  the  sides  of  which 


At  a  New  Mining  Camp 

it  has  tramped  into  mud  and  covered  with  hundreds  of  lit- 
tle pine  boxes  of  houses  and  log -cabins,  and  the  simple 
quadrangles  of  four  planks  which  mark  a  building  site.  In 
front  of  you  is  a  village  of  fresh  pine.  There  is  not  a 
brick,  a  painted  front,  nor  an  awning  in  the  whole  town.  It 
is  like  a  city  of  fresh  card-board,  and  the  pine  shanties 
seem  to  trust  for  support  to  the  rocky  sides  of  the  gulch 
into  which  they  have  squeezed  themselves.  In  the  street 
are  ox -teams,  mules,  men,  and  donkeys  loaded  with  ore, 
crowding  each  other  familiarly,  and  sinking  knee-deep  in 
the  mud.  Furniture  and  kegs  of  beer,  bedding  and  canned 
provisions,  clothing  and  half-open  packing-cases,  and  piles 
of  raw  lumber  are  heaped  up  in  front  of  the  new  stores — 
or  those  still  to  be  built — stores  of  canvas  only,  stores  with 
canvas  tops  and  foundations  of  logs,  and  houses  with  the 
Leadville  front,  where  the  upper  boards  have  been  left 
square  instead  of  following  the  sloping  angle  of  the  roof. 

It  is  more  like  a  circus-tent,  which  has  sprung  up  over- 
night and  which  may  be  removed  on  the  morrow,  than  a 
town,  and  you  cannot  but  feel  that  the  people  about  you 
are  a  part  of  the  show.  A  great  shaft  of  rock  that  rises 
hundreds  of  feet  above  the  lower  town  gives  the  little  village 
at  its  base  an  absurdly  pushing,  impudent  air,  and  the  si- 
lence of  the  mountains  around  from  ten  to  fourteen  thousand 
feet  high,  makes  the  confusion  of  hammers  and  the  cries  of 
the  drivers  swearing  at  their  mules  in  the  mud  and  even 
the  random  blasts  from  the  mines  futile  and  ridiculous.  It 
is  more  strange  and  fantastic  at  night,  when  it  appears  to 
one  looking  down  from  half-way  up  the  mountain  like  a 
camp  of  gypsies  at  the  foot  of  a  canon.  On  the  raw  pine 
fronts  shine  electric  lights  in  red  and  blue  globes,  mixing 
with  the  hot,  smoky  glare  rising  from  the  saloons  and  gam- 

B  65 


The  West  from  a  Car  -  Window 

bling-houses,  and  striking  upward  far  enough  to  show  the 
signs  of  The  Holy  Moses  Saloon,  The  Theatre  Comique, 
The  Keno,  and  The  Little  Delmonico  against  the  face  of 
the  great  rock  at  their  back  doors,  but  only  suggesting  the 
greater  mass  of  it  which  towers  majestically  above,  liidden 
somewhere  in  the  night.  It  is  as  incongruous  as  an  excur- 
sion boat  covered  with  colored  lights,  and  banging  out 
popular  airs  at  the  base  of  the  Palisades. 

The  town  of  Creede  is  in  what  is  known  as  the   King 


HOW  LAND   IS   CLAIMED    FOR   BUILDING — PLANKS   NAILED   TOGETHER  AND 
RESTING   ON   FOUR   STUMPS 


At  a  New  Mining  Camp 

Solomon  district;  it  is  three  hundred  and  twenty  miles 
from  Denver,  and  lies  directly  in  the  pathway  of  the  Great 
Divide.  Why  it  was  not  discovered  sooner,  why,  indeed, 
there  is  one  square  foot  of  land  in  Colorado  containing 
silver  not  yet  discovered,  is  something  which  the  Eastern 
mind  cannot  grasp.  Colorado  is  a  State,  not  a  country, 
and  in  that  State  the  mines  of  Leadville,  Aspen,  Ouray, 
Clear  Creek  County,  Telluride,  Boulder,  Silverton,  and 
Cripple  Creek,  have  yielded  up  in  the  last  year  forty  mill- 
ion dollars.  If  the  State  has  done  that  much,  it  can  do 
more ;  and  I  could  not  understand  why  any  one  in  Colorado 
should  remain  contentedly  at  home  selling  ribbons  when 
there  must  be  other  mines  to  be  had  for  the  finding.  A 
prospector  is,  after  all,  very  much  like  a  tramp,  but  with  a 
knowledge  of  minerals,  a  pick,  rations,  a  purpose,  and — 
hope.  We  know  how  many  tramps  we  have  in  the  East ; 
imagine,  then,  all  of  these,  instead  of  wandering  lazily  and 
purposelessly  from  farm-house  to  farm-house,  stopping  in- 
stead to  hammer  at  a  bit  of  rock,  or  stooping  to  pick  up 
every  loose  piece  they  find.  One  would  think  that  with  a 
regular  army  like  this  searching  everywhere  in  Colorado 
no  one  acre  of  it  would  by  this  time  have  remained  un- 
claimed. But  this  new  town  of  Creede,  once  known  only 
as  Willow  Gap,  was  discovered  but  twenty  months  ago, 
and  it  was  not  until  December  last  that  the  railway  reached 
it,  and,  as  I  have  said,  there  is  not  a  station  there  yet. 

N.  C.  Creede  was  a  prospector  who  had  made  some 
money  in  the  Monarch  district  before  he  came  to  Willow 
Gap ;  he  began  prospecting  there  on  Campbell,  now  Moses 
Mount,  with  G.  L.  Smith,  of  Salida.  One  of  the  two  picked 
up  a  piece  of  rock  so  full  of  quartz  that  they  sunk  a  shaft 
immediately  below  the   spot  where  they  had  found  the 


The  West  from  a  Car  -  Window 

stone.  According  to  all  known  laws,  they  should  have 
sunk  the  shaft  at  the  spot  from  which  the  piece  of  rock 
had  become  detached,  or  from  whence  it  had  presumably 
rolled.  It  was  as  absurd  to  dig  for  silver  where  they  did 
dig  as  it  would  be  to  sink  a  shaft  in  Larimer  Street,  in  Den- 
ver, because  one  had  found  a  silver  quarter  lying  in  the 
roadway.  But  they  dug  the  shaft ;  and  when  they  looked 
upon  the  result  of  the  first  day's  work,  Smith  cried,  "  Great 
God !"  and  Creede  said,  *'  Holy  Moses !"  and  the  Holy 
Moses  Mine  was  named.  While  I  was  in  Creede  that  gen- 
tleman was  offered  one  million  two  hundred  and  fifty  thou- 
sand dollars  for  his  share  of  this  mine,  and  declined  it. 
After  that  my  interest  in  him  fell  away.  Any  man  who 
will  live  in  a  log  house  at  the  foot  of  a  mountain,  and  drink 
melted  snow  any  longer  than  he  has  to  do  so,  or  refuse  that 
much  money  for  anything^  when  he  could  live  in  the  Knick- 
erbocker Flats,  and  drive  forth  in  a  private  hansom  with 
rubber  tires,  is  no  longer  an  object  of  public  interest. 

But  his  past  history  is  the  history  of  the  town.  Creede 
and  his  partner  knew  iney  had  a  mine,  but  had  no  money 
to  work  it.  So  they  applied  to  David  S.  Moffatt,  the  presi- 
dent of  the  Rio  Grande  Railroad,  which  has  a  track  to 
Wagon  Wheel  Gap  only  ten  miles  away,  and  Moffatt  and 
others  formed  the  Holy  Moses  Mining  Company,  and  se- 
cured a  bond  on  the  property  at  seventy  thousand  dollars. 
As  soon  as  this  was  known,  the  invasion  of  Willow  Gap  be- 
gan. It  was  the  story  of  Columbus  and  the  (tgg.  Pros- 
pectors, and  provisions  with  which  to  feed  them,  came  in 
on  foot  and  on  stages,  and  Creede  began  to  grow.  But 
no  more  mines  were  found  at.  once,  and  the  railroad  into 
the  town  was  slow  in  coming,  and  many  departed,  leaving 
their  posts  and  piles  of  rock  to  mark  their  claims.     But 

«8 


THE     'holy   MOSES "    MINE 


At  a  New  Mining  Camp 

last  June  Creede  received  a  second  boom,  and  in  a  manner 
which  heaps  ridicule  and  scorn  upon  the  scientific  knowl- 
edge of  engineers  and  mining  experts,  and  which  shows 
that  luck,  chance,  and  the  absurd  vagaries  of  fate  are  fac- 
tors of  success  upon  which  a  prospector  should  depend. 

Ralph  Granger  and  Eri  Buddenbock  ran  a  butcher  shop 
at  Wagon  Wheel  Gap.  "  The "  Renninger,  of  Patiro,  a 
prospector  with  no  tools  or  provisions,  asked  them  to  grub- 
stake him,  as  it  is  called  when  a  man  of  capital  furnishes  a 
man  of  adventure  with  bacon,  flour,  a  pick,  and  three  or 
four  donkeys,  and  starts  him  off  prospecting,  with  the  un- 
derstanding that  he  is  to  have  one-tenth  of  what  he  finds. 
Renninger  asked  Jule  Haas  to  join  him,  and  they  de- 
parted together.  One  day  the  three  burros  disappeared, 
and  wandered  off  many  miles,  with  Renninger  in  hot  and 
profane  pursuit  until  they  reached  Bachelor  Mountain, 
where  he  overtook  them.  But  they  liked  Bachelor  Mount- 
ain, and  Renninger,  failing  to  dislodge  them  with  either 
rocks  or  kicks,  seated  himself  to  await  their  pleasure,  atid 
began  to  chip  casually  at  the  nearest  rock.  He  struck  a 
vein  showing  mineral  in  such  rich  quantities  that  he  asked 
Creede  to  come  up  and  look  at  it.  Creede  looked  at  it,  and 
begged  Renninger  to  define  his  claim  at  once.  Renninger, 
offering  up  thanks  to  the  three  donkeys,  did  so,  and  named 
it  the  "  Last  Chance."  Then  Creede  located  next  to  this 
property,  shoulder  to  shoulder,  and  named  his  claim  the 
"  Amethyst."  These  names  are  merely  names  to  you ; 
they  mean  nothing ;  in  Colorado  you  speak  them  in  a  whis- 
per, and  they  sound  like  the  Standard  Oil  Company  or  the 
Koh-i-noor  diamond.  Haas  was  bought  off  for  ten  thou- 
sand dollars.  He  went  to  Germany  to  patronize  the  peo- 
ple in  the  little  German  village  from  which  he  came  with 

71 


The  West  from  a  Car  -  Window 

his  great  wealth ;  four  months  later  Renninger,  and  Bud- 
denbock,  who  had  staked  him,  sold  their  thirds  for  seventy 
thousand  dollars  each ;  a  few  days  later  Granger  was  of- 
fered one  hundred  thousand  dollars  for  his  third,  and  said 
he  thought  he  would  hold  on  to  it.  When  I  was  there,  the 
Chance  was  putting  out  one  hundred  and  eighty  thousand 
dollars  per  month.  This  shows  that  Granger  was  wiser  in 
his  generation  than  Haas. 

At  the  time  I  visited  Creede  it  was  quite  impossible  to 
secure  a  bed  in  any  of  the  hotels  or  lodging-houses.  The 
Pullman  cars  were  the  only  available  sleeping-places,  and 
rented  out  their  berths  for  the  night  they  laid  over  at  the 
mining  camp.  But  even  in  these,  sleeping  was  precarious, 
as  one  gentleman  found  the  night  after  my  arrival.  He 
was  mistaken  for  another  man  who  had  picked  up  a  bag  of 
gold-dust  from  a  faro  table  at  Little  Delmonico's,  and  who 
had  fled  into  the  night.  After  shooting  away  the  pine- 
board  fagade  in  the  Mint  gambling-house  in  which  he  was 
supposed  to  have  sought  shelter,  several  citizens  followed 
him  on  to  the  sleeping-car,  and,  of  course,  pulled  the  wrong 
man  out  of  his  berth,  and  stood  him  up  in  the  aisle  in  front 
of  four  revolvers,  while  the  porter  and  the  other  wrong 
men  shivered  under  their  blankets,  and  begged  them  from 
behind  the  closed  curtains  to  take  him  outside  before  they 
began  shooting.  The  camp  was  divided  in  its  opinion  on 
the  following  morning  as  to  whether  the  joke  was  on  the 
passenger  or  on  the  hasty  citizens. 

A  colony  of  younger  sons  from  the  East  took  pity  upon 
me,  and  gave  me  a  bunk  in  their  Grub  Stake  cabin,  where 
I  had  the  satisfaction  of  watching  the  son  of  a  president  of 
the  Somerset  Club  light  the  fire  with  kerosene  while  the 
rest  of  us  remained  under  the  blankets  and  asked  him  to 

72 


At  a  New  Mining  Camp 


"^^^'i*ft>>. 


DEBATABLE   GROUND — A   WARNING   TO   TRESPASSERS 


be  careful.  They  were  a  most  hospitable,  cheerful  lot. 
When  it  was  so  cold  that  the  ice  was  frozen  in  the  tin 
basin,  they  would  elect  to  remain  in  bed  all  day,  and  would 
mark  up  the  prices  they  intended  to  ask  for  their  lots  and 
claims  one  hundred  dollars  each ;  and  then,  considering 
this  a  fair  day's  wages  for  a  hard  day's  work,  would  go 
warmly  to  sleep  again.  It  is  interesting,  chiefly  to  mothers 
and  sisters — for  the  fathers  and  brothers  have  an  unsympa- 
thetic way  of  saying,  "  It  is  the  best  thing  for  him  " — to 
discover  how  quickly  such  carefully  bred  youths  as  one  con- 
stantly meets  in  the  mining  camps  and  ranches  of  the  West 
can  give  up  the  comforts  and  habits  of  years  and  fit  into 
their  surroundings.     It  is  instructive  and  hopeful  to  watch 

7S 


The  West  from  a  Car  -  Window 

a  young  man  who  can  and  has  ordered  numerous  dinners 
at  Bignon's,  composing  a  dessert  of  bread  and  molasses, 
or  to  see  how  neatly  a  Yale  graduate  of  one  year's  standing 
can  sweep  the  mud  from  the  cabin  floor  without  spreading 
it.  If  people  at  home  could  watch  these  young  exiles 
gorge  themselves  with  their  letters,  a  page  at  a  time,  and 
then  go  over  them  again  word  by  word,  they  would  write 
early  and  often ;  and  if  the  numerous  young  women  of 
New  York  and  Boston  could  know  that  their  photographs 
were  the  only  bright  spots  in  a  log-cabin  filled  with  cart- 
ridge-belts, picks,  saddles,  foot-ball  sweaters,  patent-medi- 
cine bottles,  and  three-months-old  magazines,  they  would 
be  moved  with  great  content. 

One  cannot  always  discern  the  true  character  of  one's 
neighbors  in  the  West.  "Dress,"  as  Bob  Acres  says, 
"  does  make  a  difference."  There  were  four  very  rough- 
looking  men  of  different  ages  sitting  at  a  table  near  me  in 
one  of  the  restaurants  or  "  eating-houses  "  of  Creede.  They 
had  marked  out  a  map  on  the  soiled  table-cloth  with  the 
point  of  an  iron  fork,  and  one  of  them  was  laying  down 
the  law  concerning  it.  There  seemed  to  be  a  dispute  con- 
cerning the  lines  of  the  claim  or  the  direction  in  which  the 
vein  ran.  It  was  no  business  of  mine,  and  there  was  so 
much  of  that  talk  that  I  should  not  have  been  attracted  to 
them,  except  that  I  expected  from  their  manner  they  might 
at  any  moment  come  to  blows  or  begin  shooting.  I  fin- 
ished before  they  did,  and  as  I  passed  the  table  over  which 
they  leaned  scowling  excitedly,  the  older  man  cried,  with 
his  finger  on  the  map : 

"  Then  Thompson  passed  the  ball  back  to  me — no,  not 
your  Thompson;  Thompson  of  '79  I  mean — and  I  carried 
it  down  the  field  all  the  way  to  the  twenty-five-yard  line. 

74 


At  a  New  Mining  Camp 

Canfield,  who  was  playing  full,  tackled  me ;  but  I  shook 
him  off,  and — " 

I  should  have  liked  to  wait  and  hear  whether  or  not  he 
made  his  touch-down. 

The  shaft  of  the  Last  Chance  Mine  is  at  the  top  of  the 
Bachelor  Mountain,  and  one  has  to  climb  and  slip  for  an 
hour  and  a  half  to  reach  it.  A  very  nice  Yale  boy  guided 
me  there,  and  seemed  as  willing  as  myself  to  sit  down  in 
the  snow  every  ten  minutes  and  look  at  the  scenery.  But 
we  saw  much  more  of  the  scenery  than  of  the  mine,  be- 
cause there  was  more  of  it  to  see,  and  there  was  no  general 
manager  to  prevent  us  from  looking  as  long  as  we  liked.  The 
trail  led  over  fallen  logs  and  up  slippery  rocks  caked  with 
ice  and  through  drifts  of  snow  higher  than  one's  head,  and 
the  pines  accompanied  us  all  the  way  with  branches  bent 
to  the  mountain-side  with  the  weight  of  the  snow,  and  a 
cold,  cheery  mountain  stream  appeared  and  disappeared 
from  under  long  bridges  of  ice  and  mocked  at  us  for  our 
slow  progress.  But  we  gave  it  a  very  close  race  coming 
down.  Sometimes  we  walked  in  the  cold,  dark  shadows 
of  the  pines,  where  hardly  a  ray  of  sunlight  came,  and 
again  the  trail  would  cross  a  landslide,  and  the  wind 
brought  strong  odors  of  the  pine  and  keen,  icy  blasts  from 
the  snow-capped  ranges  which  stretched  before  us  for  fifty  • 
miles,  and  we  could  see  Creede  lying  at  our  feet  like  a  box 
of  spilled  jackstraws.  Every  now  and  then  we  met  long 
lines  of  burros  carrying  five  bags  of  ore  each,  with  but 
twenty  dollars'  worth  of  silver  scattered  through  each  load, 
and  we  could  hear  the  voice  of  the  driver  from  far  up 
above  and  the  tinkle  of  the  bell  as  they  descended  upon 
us.  Sometimes  they  made  way  for  us  or  halted  timidly 
with  curious,  patient  eyes,  and  sometimes  they  shouldered 

n  , 


The  West  from  a  Car  -  Window 

us  promptly  backward  into  three  feet  of  snow.  It  was  a 
lonely,  impressive  journey,  and  the  wonderful  beauty  and 
silence  of  the  mountain  made  words  impertinent.  And, 
again,  we  would  come  upon  a  solitary  prospector  tapping 
at  the  great  rock  in  front  of  him,  and  only  stopping  to  dip 
his  hot  face  and  blistered  hands  into  the  snow  about  him, 
before  he  began  to  drive  the  steel  bar  again  with  the  help 
which  hope  gave  him.  His  work  but  for  this  ingredient 
would  seem  futile,  foolish,  and  impossible.  Why,  he  would 
ask  himself,  should  I  work  against  this  stone  safe  day  after 
day  only  to  bore  a  hole  in  its  side  as  minute  as  a  nail's 
point  in  the  front  of  a  house,  and  a  thousand  rods,  prob- 
ably, from  where  the  hole  should  be  ?  And  then  hope 
tells  him  that  perhaps  the  very  next  stroke  will  make  him 
a  millionaire  like  Creede,  and  so  he  makes  the  next  stroke, 
and  the  next,  and  the  next. 

If  ever  I  own  a  silver  mine,  I  am  going  to  have  it  situ- 
ated at  the  base  of  a  mountain,  and  not  at  the  top.  I  would 
not  care  to  take  that  journey  we  made  to  the  Chance  every 
day.  I  would  rather  sit  in  the  office  below  and  read  re- 
ports. After  one  gets  there,  the  best  has  been  seen ;  for 
the  general  manager  of  the  Last  Chance  Mine,  to  whom  I 
had  a  letter  of  introduction,  and  indeed  all  the  employes, 
guarded  their  treasure  with  the  most  praiseworthy  and 
faithful  vigilance.  It  was  evident  that  they  were  quietly 
determined  among  themselves  to  resist  any  attempt  on  the 
part  of  the  Yale  man  and  myself  to  carry  away  the  shaft 
with  us.  We  could  have  done  so  only  over  their  dead 
bodies.  The  general  manager  confounded  me  with  the 
editor  of  the  Saturday  Night,  which  he  said  he  reads,  and 
which  certainly  ought  to  account  for  several  things.  I  ex- 
pected to  be  led  into  a  tunnel,  and  to   be  shown  delicate 


At  a  New  Mining  Camp 

veins  of  white  silver  running  around  the  sides,  which  one 
could  cut  out  with  a  penknife  and  make  into  scarf-pins 
and  watch  guards.  If  not,  from  whence,  then,  do  the  nug- 
gets come  that  the  young  and  disappointed  lover  sends  as 
a  wedding  present  to  the  woman  who  should  have  married 
him,  when  she  marries  some  other  man  who  has  sensibly 
remained  in  the  East — a  present,  indeed,  which  has  always 
struck  me  as  extremely  economical,  and  much  cheaper  than 
standing-lamps.  But  I  saw  no  silver  nuggets.  One  of  the 
workmen  showed  us  a  hole  in  the  side  of  the  mountain 
which  he  assured  us  was  the  Last  Chance  Mine,  and  that 
out  of  this  hole  one  hundred  and  eighty  thousand  dollars 
came  every  month.  He  then  handed  us  a  piece  of  red 
stone  and  a  piece  of  black  stone,  and  said  that  when  these 
two  stones  were  found  together  silver  was  not  far  off.  To 
one  thirsting  for  a  sight  of  the  precious  metal  this  was 
about  as  satisfying  as  being  told  that  after  the  invitations 
had  been  sent  out  and  the  awning  stretched  over  the  side- 
walk there  was  a  chance  of  a  dance  in  the  neighborhood. 
I  was  also  told  that  the  veins  lie  between  walls  of  porphyry 
and  trachyte,  but  that  there  is  not  a  distinctly  marked  dif- 
ference, as  the  walls  resemble  each  other  closely.  This 
may  or  may  not  be  true  ;  it  is  certainly  not  interesting,  and 
I  regret  that  I  cannot  satisfy  the  mining  expert  as  to  the 
formation  of  the  mine,  or  tell  him  whether  or  not  the 
vein'  is  a  heavy  galena  running  so  much  per  cent,  of 
lead,  or  a  dry  silicious  ore,  or  whether  the  ore  bodies 
were  north  and  south,  and  are  or  are  not  true  fissures, 
and  at  what  angle  the  contact  or  body  veins  cut  these 
same  fissures.  All  of  this  I  should  have  ascertained  had 
the  general  manager  been  more  genial ;  but  we  cannot  ex- 
pect one  man  to  combine  the  riches  of  Montezuma  and 
V  81 


The  West  from  a  Car  -  Window 

the  graces  of  Chesterfield.  One  is  sure  to  destroy  the 
other. 

The  social  life  of  Creede  is  much  more  interesting  than 
outputs  and  ore  values.  There  were  several  social  func- 
tions while  I  was  there  which  tend  to  show  the  happy 
spirit  of  the  place.  There  was  a  prize-fight  at  Billy 
Woods',  a  pie-eating  match  at  Kernan's,  a  Mexican  circus 
in  the  bottom  near  Wagon  Wheel  Gap,  a  religious  service 
at  Watrous  and  Bannigan's  gambling-house,  and  the  first 
wedding  in  the  history  of  the  town.  I  was  sorry  to  miss 
this  last,  especially  as  three  prominent  citizens,  misunder. 
standing  the  purpose  of  my  visit  to  Creede,  took  the  trouble 
to  scour  the  mountain-side  for  me  in  order  that  I  might 
photograph  the  wedding  party  in  a  group,  which  I  should 
have  been  delighted  to  do.  The  bride  was  the  sister  of 
Billy  Woods's  barkeeper,  and  "  Stony  "  Sargeant,  a  faro- 
dealer  at  "  Soapy  "  Smith's,  was  the  groom.  The  Justice 
of  the  Peace,  whose  name  I  forget,  performed  the  cere- 
mony, and  Edward  De  Vinne,  the  Tramp  Poet,  offered  a, 
few  appropriate  and  well  -  chosen  remarks,  after  which 
Woods  and  Smith,  who  run  rival  gambling-houses,  outdid 
each  other  in  the  extravagant  practice  of  "  opening  wine." 
All  of  these  are  prominent  citizens,  and  the  event  was 
memorable. 

I  met  several  of  these  prominent  citizens  while  in 
Creede,  and  found  them  affable.  Billy  Woods  fights,  or 
used  to  fight,  at  two  hundred  and  ten  pounds,  and  rejoices 
in  the  fact  that  a  New  York  paper  once  devoted  five  col- 
umns to  his  personality.  His  reputation  saves  him  the  ex- 
pense of  paying  men  to  keep  order.  Bob  Ford,  who  shot 
Jesse  James,  was  another  prominent  citizen  of  my  acquaint- 
ance.   He  does  not  look  like  a  desperado,  but  has  a  loutish 


VALUABLE   REAL   ESTATE 


At  a  yew  Mining  Camp 

apologetic  air,  which  is  explained  by  the  fact  that  he  shot 
Jesse  James  in  the  back,  when  the  latter  was  engaged  in 
the  innocent  work  of  hanging  a  picture  on  the  wall.  Ford 
never  quite  recovered  from  the  fright  he  received  when 
he  found  out  who  it  was  that  he  had  killed.  "Bat"  Mas- 
terden  was  of  an  entirely  different  class.  He  dealt  for 
Watrous,  and  has  killed  twenty-eight  men,  once  three  to- 
gether. One  night  when  he  was  off  duty  I  saw  a  drunken 
man  slap  his  face,  and  the  silence  was  so  great  that  we 
could  hear  the  electric  light  sputter  in  the  next  room ;  but 
Masterden  only  laughed,  and  told  the  man  to  come  back 
and  do  it  again  when  he  was  sober.  "  Troublesome  Tom  " 
Cady  acted  as  a  capper  for  "  Soapy  "  Smith,  and  played  the 
shell  game  during  the  day.  He  was  very  grateful  to  me 
for  teaching  him  a  much  superior  method  in  which  the 
game  is  played  in  the  effete  East.  His  master,  "  Soapy  " 
Smith,  was  a  very  bad  man  indeed,  and  hired  at  least 
twelve  men  to  lead  the  prospector  with  a  little  money,  or 
the  tenderfoot  who  had  just  arrived,  up  to  the  numerous 
tables  in  his  gambling-saloon,  where  they  were  robbed  in 
various  ways  so  openly  that  they  deserved  to  lose  all  that 
was  taken  from  them. 

There  were  also  some  very  good  shots  at  Creede,  and 
some  very  bad  ones.  Of  these  latter  was  Mr.  James  Pow- 
ers, who  emptied  his  revolver  and  Rab  Brothers'  store  at 
the  same  time  without  doing  any  damage.  He  explained 
that  he  was  crowded  and  wanted  more  room.  The  most 
delicate  shooting  was  done  by  the  Louisiana  Kid — I  don't 
know  what  his  other  name  was  —  who  was  robbed  in 
Soapy  Smith's  saloon,  and  was  put  out  when  he  expost- 
ulated. He  waited  patiently  until  one  of  Smith's  men 
named  Farnham,  appeared,  and  then,  being  more  intent 


The  West  from  a  Car  -  Window 

in  showing  his  skill  than  on  killing  Farnham,  shot  the 
thumb  off  his  right  hand  as  it  rested  on  the  trigger.  Farn- 
ham shifted  his  pistol  to  his  left  hand,  with  which  he  shot 
equally  well,  but  before  he  could  fire  the  Kid  shot  the 
thumb  off  that  hand  too. 

This  is,  of  course,  Creede  at  night.  It  is  not  at  all  a  dan- 
gerous place,  and  the  lawlessness  is  scattered  and  mild. 
There  was  only  one  street,  and  as  no  one  cared  to  sit  on 
the  edge  of  a  bunk  in  a  cold  room  at  night,  the  gambling- 
houses  were  crowded  in  consequence  every  evening.  It 
was  simply  because  there  was  nowhere  else  to  go.  The 
majority  of  the  citizens  used  them  as  clubs,  and  walked 
from  one  to  the  other  talking  claims  and  corner  lots,  and 
dived  down  into  their  pockets  for  specimens  of  ore  which 
they  passed  around  for  examination.  Others  went  there  to 
keep  warm,  and  still  others  to  sleep  in  the  corner  until 
they  were  put  out.  The  play  was  never  high.  There  was 
so  much  of  it,  though,  that  it  looked  very  bad  and  wicked 
and  rough,  but  it  was  quite  harmless.  There  were  no  sud- 
den oaths,  nor  parting  of  the  crowd,  and  pistol-shots  or 
gleaming  knives — or,  at  least,  but  seldom.  The  women 
who  frequented  these  places  at  night,  in  spite  of  their  som- 
breros and  flannel  shirts  and  belts,  were  a  most  unpictu- 
resque  and  unattractive  element.  They  were  neither  dash- 
ing and  bold,  nor  remorseful  and  repentant. 

They  gambled  foolishly,  and  laughed  when  they  won, 
and  told  the  dealer  he  cheated  when  they  lost.  The  men 
occasionally  gave  glimpses  of  the  life  which  Bret  Harte 
made  dramatic  and  picturesque — the  women,  never.  The 
most  uncharacteristic  thing  of.  the  place,  and  one  which 
was  Bret  Hartish  in  every  detail,  was  the  service  held  in 
Watrous  and  Bannigan's  gambling-saloon.     The  hall  is  a 


At  a  New  Mining  Camp 

very  long  one  with  a  saloon  facing  the  street,  and  keno 
tables,  and  a  dozen  other  games  in  the  gambling-room  be- 
yond. When  the  doors  between  the  two  rooms  are  held 
back  they  make  a  very  large  hall.  A  clergyman  asked  Wat- 
rous  if  he  could  have  the  use  of  the  gambling-hall  on  Sunday 
night.  The  house  was  making  about  three  hundred  dollars 
an  hour,  and  Watrous  calculated  that  half  an  hour  would 
be  as  much  as  he  could  afford  towards  the  collection.  He 
mounted  a  chair  and  said,  "  Boys,  this  gentleman  wants 
to  make  a  few  remarks  to  you  of  a  religious  nature.  All 
the  games  at  that  end  of  the  hall  will  stop,  and  you  want 
to  keep  still." 

The  clergyman  stood  on  the  platform  of  the  keno  outfit, 
and  the  greater  part  of  the  men  took  the  seats  around  it, 
toying  with  the  marking  cards  scattered  over  the  table 
in  front  of  them,  while  the  men  in  the  saloon  crowded  the 
doorway  from  the  swinging-doors  to  the  bar,  and  looked  on 
with  curious  and  amused  faces.  At  the  back  of  the  room 
the  roulette  wheel  clicked  and  the  ball  rolled.  The  men 
in  this  part  of  the  room  who  were  playing  lowered  their 
voices,  but  above  the  voice  of  the  preacher  one  could 
hear  the  clinking  of  the  silver  and  the  chips,  and  the  voice 
of  the  boy  at  the  wheel  calling,  "  seventeen  and  black,  and 
twenty-eight  and  black  again  and — keep  the  ball  rolling, 
gentlemen  —  and  four  and  red."  There  are  two  electric 
lights  in  the  middle  of  the  hall  and  a  stove ;  the  men  were 
crowded  closely  around  this  stove,  and  the  lamps  shone 
through  the  smoke  on  their  tanned  upturned  faces  and  on 
the  white  excited  face  of  the  preacher  above  them.  There 
was  the  most  excellent  order,  and  the  collection  was  very 
large.  I  asked  Watrous  how  much  he  lost  by  the  interrup- 
tion. 

89 


The  West  from  a  Car  -  Window 

"  Nothing,"  he  said,  quickly,  anxious  to  avoid  the  ap- 
pearance of  good  ;  "  I  got  it  all  back  at  the  bar." 

Of  the  inner  life  of  Creede  I  saw  nothing ;  I  mean  the 
real  business  of  the  place — the  speculation  in  real  estate 
and  in  mines.  Capitalists  came  every  day,  and  were  car- 
ried off  up  the  mountains  to  look  at  a  hole  in  the  ground, 
and  down  again  to  see  the  assay  tests  of  the  ore  taken 
from  it.  Prospectors  scoured  the  sides  of  the  mountains 
from  sundawn  to  sunset,  and  at  night  their  fires  lit  up  the 
range,  and  their  little  heaps  of  stone  and  their  single  stick, 
with  their  name  scrawled  on  it  in  pencil,  made  the  mount- 
ains look  like  great  burying  -  grounds.  All  of  the  land 
within  two  miles  of  Creede  was  claimed  by  these  simple 
proofs  of  ownership — simple,  yet  as  effectual  as  a  parch- 
ment sealed  ana  signed.  When  the  snow  has  left  the 
mountains,  and  these  claims  can  be  worked,  it  will  be  time 
enough  to  write  the  real  history  oi  ine  rise  or  fall  of 
Creede. 


IV 

A  THREE-YEARr-OLD  CITY 


A  Three- Year > Old  City 


IV 

A  THREE-TEAR-OLD  CITY 

I  HE  only  interest  which  the  East  can  tate  in 
3^  'fiS  Oklahoma  City  for  some  time  to  come  must 
nf&Tl  iw"  Hr  ]3g  ^^g  same  as  that  with  which  one  regards  a 
I  portrait  finished  by  a  lightning  crayon  artist, 
"  with  frame  complete,"  in  ten  minutes.  We  may  have 
seen  better  portraits  and  more  perfect  coloring,  but  we 
have  never  watched  one  completed,  as  it  were,  "  while 
you  wait."  People  long  ago  crowded  to  see  Master  Bet- 
ty act,  not  because  there  were  no  better  actors  in  those 
days,  but  because  he  was  so  very  young  to  do  it  so  very 
well.  It  was  as  a  freak  of  nature,  a  Josef  Hoffman  Of  the 
drama,  that  they  considered  him,  and  Oklahoma  City  must 
content  itself  with  being  only  of  interest  as  yet  as  a  freak 
of  our  civilization. 

After  it  has  decided  which  of  the  half-dozen  claimants  to 
each  of  its  town  sites  is  the  only  one,  and  the  others  have 
stopped  appealing  to  higher  and  higher  courts,  and  have 
left  the  law  alone  and  have  reduced  their  attention  strictly 
to  business,  and  the  city  has  been  burned  down  once  or 
twice,  and  had  its  Treasurer  default  and  its  Mayor  im- 
peached, and  has  been  admitted  to  the  National  Baseball 
League,  it  may  hope  to  be  regarded  as  a  full-grown  rival 
city ;  but  at  present,  as  far  as  it  concerns  the  far  East,  it 


The  West  from  a  Car  -  Window 


OKLAHOMA  CITY  ON  THE  DAY  OP  THE  OPENING 


is  interesting  chiefly  as  a  city  that  grew  up  overnight,  and 
did  in  three  years  or  less  what  other  towns  have  accom- 
plished only  after  half  a  century. 

The  history  of  its  pioneers  and  their  invasion  of  their 
undiscovered  country  not  only  shows  how  far  the  West  is 
from  the  East,  but  how  much  we  have  changed  our  ways  of 
doing  things  from  the  days  of  the  Pilgrim  Fathers  to  those 
of  the  modern  pilgrims,  the  "  boomers  "  and  "  sooners  "  of 
the  end  of  the  century.  We  have  seen  pictures  in  our 
school-books,  and  pictures  which  Mr.  Boughton  has  made 
for  us,  of  the  Mayflower^s  people  kneeling  on  the  shore,  the 
long,  anxious  voyage  behind  them,  and  the  "  rock-bound 
coast"  of  their  new  home  before  them,  with  the  Indians 
looking  on  doubtfully  from  behind  the  pine-trees.  It  makes 
a  very  interesting  picture — those  stern-faced  pilgrims  in 
their  knickerbockers  and  broad  white  collars;  each  man 
strong  in  the  consciousness  that  he  has  resisted  persecution 

94 


A  Three -Year -Old  City 

and  overcome  the  perils  of  the  sea,  and  is  ready  to  meet 
the  perils  of  an  unknown  land.  I  should  like  you  to  place 
in  contrast  with  this  the  opening  of  Oklahoma  Territory  to 
the  new  white  settlers  three  years  ago.  These  modern  pil- 
grims stand  in  rows  twenty  deep,  separated  from  the  prom- 
ised land  not  by  an  ocean,  but  by  a  line  scratched  in  the 
earth  with  the  point  of  a  soldier's  bayonet.  The  long  row 
toeing  this  line  are  bending  forward,  panting  with  excite- 
ment, and  looking  with  greedy  eyes  towards  the  new 
Canaan,  the  women  with  their  dresses  tucked  up  to  their 
knees,  the  men  stripped  of  coats  and  waistcoats  for  the 
coming  race.  And  then,  a  trumpet  call,  answered  by  a 
thousand  hungry  yells  from  all  along  the  line,  and  hundreds 
of  men  and  women  on  foot  and  on  horseback  break  away 
across  the  prairie,  the  stronger  pushing  down  the  weak,  and 
those  on  horseback  riding  over  and  in  some  cases  killing 
those  on  foot,  in  a  mad,  unseemly  race  for  something  which 
they  are  getting  for  nothing.  These  pilgrims  do  not  drop 
on  one  knee  to  give  thanks  decorously,  as  did  Columbus 
according  to  the  twenty-dollar  bills,  but  fall  on  both  knees, 
and  hammer  stakes  into  the  ground  and  pull  them  up  again, 
and  drive  them  down  somewhere  else,  at  a  place  which 
they  hope  will  eventually  become  a  corner  lot  facing  the 
post-office,  and  drag  up  the  next  man's  stake,  and  threaten 
him  with  a  Winchester  because  he  is  on  their  land,  which 
they  have  owned  for  the  last  three  minutes.  And  there 
are  no  Indians  in  this  scene.  They  have  been  paid  one 
dollar  and  twenty-five  cents  an  acre  for  the  land,  which  is 
worth  five  dollars  an  acre  as  it  lies,  before  a  spade  has 
been  driven  into  it  or  a  bit  of  timber  cut,  and  they  are 
safely  out  of  the  way. 

Oklahoma  Territory,  which  lies  in  the  most  fertile  part 


The  West  from  a  Car  -  Window 

of  the  Indian  Territory,  equally  distant  from  Kansas  and 
Texas,  was  thrown  open  to  white  settlers  at  noon  on  the 
22d  of  April,  1889.  To  appreciate  the  Oklahoma  City  of 
this  day,  it  is  necessary  to  go  back  to  the  Oklahoma  of 
three  years  ago.  The  city  at  that  time  consisted  of  a  rail- 
road station,  a  section  house  and  water-tank,  the  home  of 
the  railroad  agent,  and  four  other  small  buildings.  The  rest 
was  prairie-land,  with  low  curving  hills  covered  with  high 
grass  and  bunches  of  thick  timber ;  this  as  far  as  the  eye 
could  see,  and  nothing  else.  This  land,  which  is  rich  and 
black  and  soft,  and  looks  like  chocolate  where  the  plough 
has  turned  the  sod,  was  thrown  open  by  the  proclamation 
of  the  President  to  white  settlers,  who  could  on  such  a  day, 
at  such  an  hour,  "  enter  and  occupy  it "  for  homestead 
holdings.  A  homestead  holding  is  one  hundred  and  sixty 
acres  of  land.  The  proclamation  said  nothing  about  town 
sites,  or  of  the  division  of  town  sites  into  "  lots  "  for  stores, 
or  of  streets  and  cross-streets.  But  several  bodies  of  men 
in  different  parts  of  Kansas  prepared  plans  long  before  the 
opening,  for  a  town  to  be  laid  out  around  the  station,  the 
water-tank,  and  the  other  buildings  where  Oklahoma  City 
now  stands,  and  had  their  surveyors  and  their  blue  prints 
hidden  away  in  readiness  for  the  22d  of  April.  All  of  those 
who  intended  to  enter  this  open-to-all-comers  race  for  land 
knew  that  the  prairie  around  the  station  would  be  laid  out 
into  lots.  Hence  that  station  and  other  stations  which  in 
time  would  become  cities  were  the  goals  for  which  over 
forty  thousand  people  raced  from  the  borders  of  the  new 
Territory.  So  many  of  these  "beat  the  pistol"  on  the 
start  and  reached  the  goal  first  that,  in  consequence,  the 
efforts  ever  since  to  run  this  race  over  again  through 
the  law   courts  has   kept   Oklahoma   City  from  growing 


A  Three-Year -Old  City 

with  even  more  marvellous   rapidity  than  it  already  has 
done. 

The  Sunday  before  the  2 2d  was  a  warm  bright  day,  and 
promised  well  for  the  morrow.  Soldiers  and  deputy  mar- 
shals were  the  only  living  beings  in  sight  around  the  station, 
and  those  who  tried  to  descend  from  passing  trains  were 
p ashed  back  again  at  the  point  of  the  bayonet.  The  course 
was  being  kept  clear  for  the  coming  race.  But  freight  cars 
loaded  with  raw  lumber  and  furniture  and  all  manner  of 
household  goods,  as  well  as  houses  themselves,  ready  to  be 
put  together  like  the  joints  of  a  trout  rod,  were  allowed  free 
entry,  and  stood  for  a  mile  along  the  side-track  awaiting 
their  owners,  who  were  hugging  the  border  lines  from  fifteen 
to  thirty  miles  away.  Captain  D.  F.  Stiles,  of  the  Tenth 
Infantry,  who  had  been  made  provost  marshal  of  the  new 
Territory,  and  whose  soldiers  guarded  the  land  before  and 
maintained  peace  after  the  invasion,  raised  his  telescope  at 
two  minutes  to  twelve  on  the  eventful  22d  of  April,  and  saw 
nothing  from  the  station  to  the  horizon  but  an  empty  green 
prairie  of  high  waving  grass.  It  would  take  the  first  horse 
(so  he  and  General  Merritt  and  his  staff  in  their  private  car 
on  the  side-track  decided)  at  least  one  hour  and  a  quarter 
to  cover  the  fifteen  miles  from  the  nearest  border.  They  ac- 
cordingly expected  to  catch  the  first  glimpse  of  the  leaders 
in  the  race  with  their  glasses  in  about  half  an  hour.  The 
signal  on  the  border  was  a  trumpet  call  given  by  a  cavalry- 
man on  a  white  horse,  which  he  rode  in  a  circle  in  order 
that  those  who  were  too  far  away  to  hear  the  trumpet 
might  see  that  it  had  been  sounded.  A  like  signal  was 
given  at  the  station;  but  before  it  had  died  away,  and  not 
half  an  hour  later,  five  hundred  men  sprang  from  the  long 
grass,  dropped  from  the  branches  of  trees,  crawled  from 


The  West  from  a  Car  -  Window 

under  freight  cars  and  out  of  canons  and  ditches,  and  the 
blank  prairie  became  alive  with  men  running  and  racing 
about  like  a  pack  of  beagles  that  have  suddenly  lost  a  hot 
trail. 

Fifteen  minutes  after  twelve  the  men  of  the  Seminole 
Land  and  Town  Company  were  dragging  steel  chains  up  the 
street  on  a  run,  the  red  and  white  barber  poles  and  the 
transits  were  in  place  all  over  the  prairie,  and  neat  little 
rows  of  stakes  stretched  out  in  regular  lines  to  mark  where 
they  hoped  the  town  might  be.  At  twenty  minutes  after 
twelve  over  forty  tents  were  in  position,  and  the  land  around 
them  marked  out  by  wooden  pegs.  This  was  the  work  of 
the  "  sooners,"  as  those  men  were  called  who  came  into  the 
Territory  too  soon,  not  for  their  own  interests,  but  for  the 
interests  of  other  people.  At  a  quarter  past  one  the  Rev. 
James  Murray  and  a  Mr.  Kincaid,  who  represented  the  Ok- 
lahoma Colony,  stopped  a  sweating  horse  and  creaking 
buggy  and  hammered  in  their  first  stakes.  They  had  left 
the  border  line  exactly  at  noon,  and  had  made  the  fifteen 
miles  at  the  rate  of  five  minutes  per  mile.  Four  minutes  later 
J.  H.  McCortney  and  Colonel  Harrison,  of  Kansas,  arrived 
from  the  Canadian  River,  having  whipped  their  horses  for 
fifteen  miles,  and  the  mud  from  the  river  was  over  the  hubs 
of  the  wheels.  The  first  train  from  the  south  reached  the 
station  at  five  minutes  past  two,  and  unloaded  twenty- 
five  hundred  people.  They  scattered  like  a  stampeded  herd 
over  the  prairie,  driving  in  their  little  stakes,  and  changing 
their  minds  about  it  and  driving  them  in  again  at  some 
other  point.  There  were  already,  even  at  this  early  period 
of  the  city's  history,  over  three  different  men  on  each  lot 
of  ground,  each  sitting  by  the  stake  bearing  his  name,  and 
each  calling  the  other  a  "  sooner,"  and  therefore  one  ineli- 

100 


A  Three -Year -Old  City 

gible  to  hold  land,  and  many  other  names  of  more  ancient 
usage. 

But  there  was  no  blood  shed  even  during  the  greatest 
excitement  of  that  feverish  afternoon.  This  was  in  great 
part  due  to  the  fact  that  the  provost  marshal  confiscated 
all  the  arms  he  saw.  At  three  o'clock  the  train  from  the 
north  arrived  with  hundreds  more  hanging  from  the  steps 
and  crowding  the  aisles.  The  sight  of  so  many  others  who 
had  beaten  them  m  the  race  seemed  to  drive  these  late- 
comers almost  frantic,  and  they  fell  over  one  another  in 
their  haste,  and  .their  race  for  the  choicest  lots  was  like  a 
run  on  a  bank  when  no  one  knows  exactly  where  the  bank 
is.  One  young  woman  was  in  such  haste  to  alight  that  she 
crawled  out  of  the  car  window,  and  as  soon  as  she  reached 
the  solid  earth  beneath,  drove  m  her  stake  and  claimed  all 
the  land  around  it.  This  was  part  of  the  military  reserva- 
tion, and  the  soldiers  explained  this  to  her,  or  tried  to, 
but  she  was  suspicious  of  every  one,  and  remained  seated 
by  her  wooden  peg  until  nightfall.  She  could  just  as 
profitably  have  driven  it  into  the  centre  of  Union  Square. 
Another  woman  stuck  up  a  sign  bearing  the  words,  '*A 
Soldier's  Widow's  Land,"  and  was  quite  confident  that  the 
chivalry  of  the  crowd  would  respect  that  title.  Captain 
Stiles  told  her  that  he  thought  it  would  not,  and  showed 
her  a  lot  of  ground  still  unclaimed  that  she  could  have,  but 
she  refused  to  move.  The  lot  he  showed  her  is  now  on  the 
main  street,  in  the  centre  of  the  town,  and  the  lot  she  was 
finally  forced  to  take  is  three  miles  out  of  the  city  in  the 
prairie.  Another  woman  drove  her  stake  between  the  rail- 
road ties,  and  said  it  would  take  a  locomotive  and  a  train 
of  cars  to  move  her.  One  man  put  his  stake  in  the  very 
centre  of  the  lot  sites  laid  out  by  the  surveyors,  and  claimed 

103 


The  West  from  a  Car  -  Window 

the  one  hundred  and  sixty  acres  around  for  his  homestead 
holding.  They  explained  to  him  that  he  could  only  have 
as  much  land  as  would  make  a  lot  in  the  town  site,  and  that 
if  he  wanted  one  hundred  and  sixty  acres,  must  locate  it 
outside  of  the  city  limits.  He  replied  that  the  proclamation 
said  nothing  about  town  sites. 

"  But,  of  course,"  he  went  on,  "  if  you  people  want  to 
build  a  city  around  my  farm,  I  have  no  objections.  I  don't 
care  for  city  life  myself,  and  I  am  going  to  turn  this  into  a 
vegetable  garden.  Maybe,  though,  if  you  want  it  very  bad, 
I  might  sell  it." 

He  and  the  city  fought  it  out  for  months,  and,  for  all  I 
know,  are  at  it  still.  At  three  o'clock,  just  three  hours  after 
the  Territory  was  invaded,  the  Oklahoma  Colony  deck"*^-d 
the  polls  open,  and  voting  began  for  Mayor  and  City  Clerk. 
About  four  hundred  people  voted.  Other  land  companies 
at  once  held  public  meetmgs  and  protested  against  this 
election.  Each  land  company  was  mapping  out  and  sur- 
veying the  city  to  suit  its  own  interests,  and  every  man  and 
woman  was  more  or  less  of  a  land  company  to  himself  or  her- 
self, and  the  lines  and  boundaries  and  streets  were  inter- 
secting and  crossing  like  the  lines  of  a  dress,  pattern. 
Night  came  on  and  put  a  temporary  hush  to  this  bedlam, 
and  six  thousand  people  went  to  sleep  in  the  open  air,  the 
greater  part  of  them  without  shelter.  There  was  but  one 
well  in  the  city,  and  word  was  brought  to  Captain  Stiles 
about  noon  of  the  next  day  that  the  water  from  this  was 
being  sold  by  a  speculative  gentleman  at  five  cents  per  pint, 
and  that  those  who  had  no  money  were  suffering.  Captain 
Stiles  found  the  well  guarded  by  a  faro-dealer  with  a  re- 
volver. He  had  a  tin  basin  between  his  knees  filled  with 
nickels.     He  argued  that  he  owned  the  lot  on  which  the 

104 


A  Three -Year -Old  Citij 


CAPTAIN   D.  F.  STILES 


water  stood,  and  had  as  much  private  right  to  the  well  as 
to  a  shaft  that  led  down  to  a  silver  or  an  iron  mine.  Cap- 
tain Stiles  threw  him  and  his  basin  out  at  some  distance  on 
to  the  prairie,  and  detailed  a  corporal's  guard  to  see  that 
every  one  should  get  as  much  water  as  he  wanted. 

During  the  morning  there  was  an  attempt  made  to  in- 
duce the  surveyors  of  the  different  land  companies  to  com- 
bine and  readjust  their  different  plans,  but  without  success. 
Finally,  at  three  o'clock,  the  people  came  together  in  des- 
peration to  decide  what  was  to  be  done,  and,  after  an 
amusing  and  exciting  mass-meeting,  fourteen  unhappy  and 

105 


The  West  from  a  Car  -  Window 

prominent  citizens  were  selected  to  agree  upon  an  entirely 
new  site.  The  choosing  of  this  luckless  fourteen  was  ac- 
complished by  general  nomination,  each  nominee  having 
first  to  stand  upon  a  box  that  he  might  be  seen  and  con- 
sidered by  the  crowd.  They  had  to  submit  to  such  em- 
barrassing queries  as,  "Where  are  you  from,  and  why  did 
you  have  to  leave  ?"  "  Where  did  you  get  that  hat  ?" 
"  What  is  your  excuse  for  living  V  *'  Do  you  live  with 
your  folks,  or  does  your  wife  support  you  ?"  "  What  was 
your  other  name  before  you  came  here  ?"  The  work  of  this 
committee  began  on  the  morrow,  and  as  they  slowly  pro- 
ceeded along  the  new  boundary  lines  which  they  had 
mapped  out,  they  were  followed  by  all  of  those  of  the 
population,  which  now  amounted  to  ten  thousand  souls, 
who  thought  it  safe  to  leave  their  claims.  As  a  rule,  they 
found  three  men  on  each  lot,  and  it  was  their  pleasant  duty 
to  decide  to  which  of  these  the  lot  belonged.  They  did 
this  on  the  evidence  of  those  who  had  lots  near  by.  In 
many  cases,  each  member  of  each  family  had  selected  a  lot 
for  himself,  and  this  complicated  matters  still  farther.  The 
crowd  at  last  became  so  importunate  and  noisy  that  the 
committee  asked  for  a  military  guard,  which  was  given 
them,  and  the  crowd  after  that  was  at  least  kept  off  the  lot 
they  were  considering.  The  committee  met  with  no  real 
opposition  until  it  reached  Main  Street  on  Saturday,  the 
fifth  day  of  the  city's  life,  where  those  who  had  settled 
along  the  lines  laid  down  by  the  Seminole  Land  Company 
pulled  up  the  stakes  of  the  citizens'  committee  as  soon  as 
they  were  driven  down.  For  a  time  it  looked  very  much 
as  though  the  record  of  peace  was  about  to  be  broken 
along  with  other  things,  but  a  committee  of  five  men  from 
each  side  of  the  street  decided  the  matter  at  a  meeting  held 

106 


A  Three 'Year -Old  City 

that  afternoon.  At  this  same  public  meeting  articles  of 
confederation  were  adopted,  and  a  temporary  Mayor,  Re- 
corder,"PoIice  Judge,  and  other  city  officials  were  appointed, 
who  were  to  receive  one  dollar  for  their  services.  This 
meeting  closed  with  cheers  and  with  the  singing  of  the 
doxology. 

The  next  day  was  Sunday,  and  was  more  or  less  observed. 
Captain  Stiles  visited  the  gamblers,  who  swarmed  about 
the  place  in  great  numbers,  and  asked  them  to  close  their 
tables,  which  they  did,  although  he  had  no  power  to  stop 
them  if  they  had  not  wished  to  do  so.  In  the  afternoon 
two  separate  religious  services  were  held,  to  which  the 
people  were  called  by  a  trumpeter  from  the  infantry  camp. 

This  is,  in  brief,  the  history  of  the  first  week  of  this  new 
city.  There  were,  considering  the  circumstances,  but  few 
disturbances,  and  there  was  no  drunkenness.  This  is  dis- 
appointing, but  true.  Both  came  later.  But  at  the  first  no 
one  cared  to  shoot  the  gentleman  on  the  other  end  of  his 
lot,  lest  the  man  on  the  next  lot  might  prove  to  be  a  rela- 
tive of  his,  and  begin  to  shoot  too.  Later  on,  when  every- 
body became  better  acquainted,  the  shooting  was  more 
general.  They  could  not  easily  get  anything  to  drink,  as 
Captain  Stiles  seized  all  the  liquor,  and  when  it  came  in 
vessels  of  unmanageable  size  that  could  not  be  stored  away, 
spilled  it  over  the  prairie.  In  two  weeks  over  one  thousand 
buildings  were  enclosed,  and  there  would  have  been  more 
if  there  had  been  more  lumber. 

It  would  be  interesting  to  follow  the  course  of  this  sky- 
rocket among  cities  up  to  the  present  day,  and  tell  how 
laws  were  evolved  and  courts  established,  and  the  complex- 
ities of  the  situation  disentangled  ;  but  that  is  work  for  one 
of  the  many  bright  young  men  who  write  monographs  on 

107 


The  West  from  a  Car  -  Window 

economic  subjects  at  the  Johns  Hopkins  University.  It  is 
just  the  sort  of  work  in  which  they  delight,  and  which  they 
do  well,  and  they  will  find  many  "  oldest  inhabitants "  of 
this  three-year-old  city  to  take  equal  delight  in  telling  them 
of  these  early  days,  and  in  explaining  the  rights  and  wrongs 
of  their  individual  lawsuits  against  their  city  and  their 
neighbors. 

It  is  impossible,  in  considering  the  founding  of  Oklaho- 
ma, to  overrate  the  services  of  Captain  Stiles.  Seldom  has 
the  case  of  the  right  man  in  the  right  place  been  so  happily 
demonstrated.  He  was  particularly  fitted  to  the  work,  al- 
though I  doubt  if  the  Government  knew  of  it  before  he  was 
sent  there,  so  apt  is  it  to  get  the  square  peg  in  the  round 
hole,  unless  the  square  peg's  uncle  is  a  Senator.     But  Cap- 


POST-OFFICK,  APRIL   22,  1889 


A  Three -Year -Old  City 

tain  Stiles,  when  he  was  a  lieutenant,  had  ruled  at  Waco, 
Texas,  during  the  reconstruction  period,  and  the  questions 
and  difficulties  that  arose  after  the  war  in  that  raw  com- 
munity fitted  him  to  deal  with  similar  ones  in  the  con- 
struction of  Oklahoma.  He  was  and  is  intensely  unpopular 
with  the  worst  element  in  Oklahoma,  and  the  better  element 
call  him  blessed,  and  have  presented  him  with  a  three-hun- 
dred dollar  gold  cane,  which  is  much  too  fine  for  him  to 
carry  except  in  clear  weather.  This  is  the  way  public  senti- 
ment should  be  adjusted.  Personal  bravery  had,  I  think,  as 
much  to  do  with  his  success  as  the  readiness  with  which 
he  met  the  difficulties  he  had  to  solve  at  a  moment's  con- 
sideration. Several  times  he  walked  up  to  the  muzzles  of  re- 
volvers with  which  desperadoes  covered  him  and  wrenched 
them  out  of  their  owners'  hands.  He  never  interfered 
between  the  people  and  the  civil  law,  and  resisted  the 
temptation  of  misusing  his  authority  in  a  situation  where  a 
weaker  man  would  have  lost  his  head  and  abused  his  power. 
He  was  constantly  appealed  to  to  settle  disputes,  and  his 
invariable  answer  was,  "  I  am  not  here  to  decide  which  of 
you  owns  that  lot,  but  to  keep  peace  between  you  until  it 
is  decided."  In  September  of  1889  a  number  of  disaffected 
citizens  announced  an  election  which  was  to  overthrow 
those  then  in  power,  and  Captain  Stiles  was  instructed  by 
his  superior  officers  to  prevent  its  taking  place.  This  he 
did  with  a  small  force  of  men  in  the  face  of  threats  from 
the  most  dangerous  element  in  the  community  of  dynamite 
bombs  and  of  a  body  of  men  armed  with  Winchesters  who 
were  to  shoot  him  first  and  his  men  later.  But  in  spite  of 
this  he  visited  and  broke  all  the  voting  booths,  wrested  a 
Winchester  from  the  hands  of  the  man  who  pointed  it  at  his 
heart  through  one  of  the  windows  of  the  polling-place,  and 

139 


The  Went  from  a  Car  -  Window 

finally  charged  the  mob  of  five  hundred  men  with  twenty- 
five  soldiers  and  his  fighting  surgeon,  young  Dr.  Ives,  and 
dispersed  them  uttterly.  I  heard  these  stories  of  him  on 
every  side,  and  I  was  rejoiced  to  think  how  well  off  our 
army  must  be  in  majors,  that  the  people  at  Washington 
can  allow  one  who  has  served  through  the  war  and  on  the 
border  and  in  this  unsettled  Territory,  and  whose  hair  has 
grown  white  in  the  service,  to  still  wear  two  bars  on  his 
shoulder-strap. 

It  is  much  more  pleasant  to  write  of  these  early  days  of 
Oklahoma  City  than  of  the  Oklahoma  City  of  the  present, 
although  one  of  its  citizens  would  not  find  it  so,  for  he  re- 
gards his  adopted  home  with  a  fierce  local  pride  and  jeal- 
ousy almost  equal  to  a  Chicagoan's  love  for  Chicago,  which 
is  saying  a  very  great  deal.  But  to  the  transient  visitor 
Oklahoma  City  of  to-day,  after  he  has  recovered  from  the 
shock  its  extent  and  solidity  give  him,  is  dispiriting  and 
unprofitable  to  a  degree.  This  may  partly  be  accounted 
for  by  the  circumstance  that  his  only  means  of  entering  it 
from  the  south  by  train  is,  or  was  at  the  time  I  visited  it, 
at  four  o'clock  in  the  morning.  No  one,  after  having  been 
iragged  out  of  his  berth  and  dropped  into  a  cold  misty 
well  of  darkness,  punctured  only  by  the  light  from  the 
brakeman's  lantern  and  a  smoking  omnibus  lamp,  is  in  a 
mood  to  grow  enthusiastic  over  the  city  about  him.  And 
the  fact  that  the  hotel  is  crowded,  and  that  he  must  sleep 
with  the  barkeeper,  does  not  tend  to  raise  his  spirits.  I 
can  heartily  recommend  this  method  of  discouraging  im- 
migration to  the  authorities  of  any  already  overcrowded 
city. 

But  as  the  sun  comes  up,  one  sees  the  remarkable  growth 
of  this  city — remarkable  not  only  for  its  extent  in  so  short 

110 


S0lf/-  l^€i 


POST-OFFICE,  JULY  4,  1890 


a  period,  but  for  the  come-to-stay  air  about  many  of  its 
buildings.  There  are  stone  banks  and  stores,  and  an  opera- 
house,  and  rows  of  brick  buildings  with  dwelling-rooms 
above,  and  in  the  part  of  the  city  where  the  people  go 
to  sleep  hundreds  of  wooden  houses,  fashioned  after  the 
architecture  of  the  sea-shore  cottages  of  the  Jersey  coast ; 
for  the  climate  is  mild  the  best  part  of  the  year.  There  are 
also  churches  of  stone  and  brick  and  stained  glass,  and  a 
flour-mill,  and  three  or  four  newspapers,  and  courts  of  law, 

and  boards  of  trade.     But  with  all  of  these  things,  which 

111 


The  West  from  a  Car  -  Window 

show  a  steadily  improving  growth  after  the  mushroom  nature 
of  its  birth,  Oklahoma  City  cannot  or  has  not  yet  shaken  off 
the  attributes  with  which  it  was  born,  and  which  in  a  com- 
munity founded  by  law  and  purchase  would  not  exist.  For 
speculation  in  land,  whether  in  lots  on  the  main  street  or 
in  homestead  holdings  on  the  prairie,  and  the  excitement 
of  real  estate  transfers,  and  the  battle  for  rights  in  the 
courts,  seem  to  be  the  prevailing  and  ruling  passion  of  the 
place.  Gambling  in  real  estate  is  as  much  in  the  air  as  is 
the  spirit  of  the  Louisiana  State  Lottery  in  New  Orleans. 
Every  one  in  Oklahoma  City  seems  to  live,  in  part  at  least, 
by  transferring  real  estate  to  some  one  else,  and"  the  lawyers 
and  real-estate  agents  live  by  helping  them  to  do  it.  It 
reminded  me  of  that  happy  island  in  the  Pacific  seas  where 
every  one  took  in  every  one  else's  washing.  This  may 
sound  unfair,  but  it  is  not  in  the  least  exaggerated.  The 
town  swarms  with  lawyers,  and  is  overrun  with  real-estate 
offices.  The  men  you  meet  and  the  men  you  pass  in  the 
street  are  not  discussing  the  weather  or  the  crops  or  the 
news  of  the  outside  world,  but  you  hear  them  say :  "  I'll 
appeal  it,  by  God  I"  "  I'll  spend  every  cent  I've  got,  sir !" 
"  They're  a  lot  of  *  sooners,'  and  I  can  prove  it !"  or,  "  Ted 
Hillman's  lot  on  Prairie  Avenue,  that  he  sold  for  two  hun- 
dred dollars,  rose  to  three  hundred  in  one  week,  and  Abner 
Brown  says  he  won't  take  six  hundred  for  it  now." 

This  is  only  the  natural  and  fitting  outcome  of  the  bun- 
gling, incomplete  bill  which,  rushed  through  at  the  hot, 
hurried  end  of  a  session,  authorized  the  opening  of  this 
territory.  The  President  might  with  equal  judgment  have 
proclaimed  that  "  The  silver  vaults  of  the  United  States 
Treasury  will  be  opened  on  the  22d  of  April,  when  citizens 
can  enter  in  and  take  away  one  hundred  and  sixty  silver 

112 


A  Three-Year-Old  City 

dollars  each,"  without  providing  laws  to  prevent  or  punish 
those  who  entered  before  that  date,  or  those  who  snatched 
more  than  their  share.  One  would  think  that  some  dis- 
tinction might  have  been  made,  in  opening  this  new  land, 
between  those  who  came  with  family  and  money  and  stock, 
meaning  to  settle  permanently,  and  those  who  took  the 
morning  train  from  Kansas  in  order  to  rush  in  and  snatch  a 
holding,  only  to  sell  it  again  in  three  hours  and  to  return 
to  their  homes  that  night;  between  those  who  brought 
capital,  and  desperadoes  and  "  boot-leggers  "  who  came  to 
make  capital  out  of  others.  If  the  land  was  worth  giving 
away,  it  was  worth  giving  to  those  who  would  make  the 
best  use  of  it,  and  worth  surrounding  with  at  least  as  much 
order  as  that  which  distinguishes  the  fight  of  the  Harvard 
Seniors  for  the  flowers  on  Class  day.  They  are  going  to 
open  still  more  territory  this  spring,  and  in  all  probability 
the  same  confusion  will  arise  and  continue,  and  it  is  also 
probable  that  many  persons  in  the  East  may  be  attracted 
by  the  announcements  and  advertisements  of  the  "  boom- 
ers "  to  this  new  land. 

The  West  is  always  full  of  hope  to  the  old  man  as  well 
as  to  the  young  one,  and  the  temptation  to  "  own  your  own 
home  "  and  to  gain  land  for  the  asking  is  very  great.  But 
the  Eastern  man  should  consider  the  question  very  care- 
fully. There  is  facing  the  passenger  who  arrives  on  the 
New  York  train  at  Sedalia  a  large  black  and  white  sign  on 
which  some  philanthropist  has  painted  "Go  East,  Young 
Man,  Go  East."  One  might  write  pages  and  not  tell  more 
than  that  sign  does,  when  one  considers  where  it  is  placed 
and  for  what  purpose  it  is  placed  there. 

A  man  in  Oklahoma  City  when  the  day's  work  is  done 
has  before  him  a  prospect  of  broad  red  olayey  streets, 

B  113 


The  West  from  a  Car  •  Window 

muddy  after  rain,  bristling  with  dust  after  a  drought,  with 
the  sun  setting  at  one  end  of  them  into  the  prairie.  He  can 
go  to  his  cottage,  or  to  "  The  Turf,"  where  he  can  lose  some 
money  at  faro,  or  he  can  sit  in  one  of  the  hotels,  which  are 
the  clubs  of  the  city,  and  talk  cattle  to  strangers  and  real 
estate  to  citizens,  or  he  can  join  a  lodge  and  talk  real  estate 
there.  Once  or  twice  a  week  a  "  show  "  makes  a  one-niorht 
stand  at  the  opera-house.  The  schools  are  not  good  for  his 
children  as  yet,  and  the  society  that  he  is  willing  his  wife 
should  enjoy  is  limited.  On  Sunday  he  goes  to  church, 
and  eats  a  large  dinner  in  the  middle  of  the  day,  and  walks 
up  to  the  top  of  the  hill  to  look  over  the  prairie  where  he 
and  many  others  would  like  to  build,  but  which  must  re- 
main empty  until  the  twelve  different  disputants  for  each 
holding  have  stopped  appealing  to  higher  courts.  This  is 
actually  the  case,  and  the  reason  the  city  has  not  spread  as 
others  around  it  have  done.  As  the  Romans  shortened 
their  swords  to  extend  their  boundaries,  so  the  people  of 
Oklahoma  City  might  cut  down  some  of  their  higher  courts 
and  increase  theirs. 

I  have  given  this  sketch  of  Oklahoma  City  as  it  impressed 
itself  on  me,  because  I  think  any  man  who  can  afford  a 
hall  bedroom  and  a  gas-stove  in  New  York  City  is  better 
off  than  he  would  be  as  the  owner  of  one  hundred  and  sixty 
acres  on  the  prairie,  or  in  one  of  these  small  so-called  cities. 

And  the  men  who  are  at  the  head  of  affairs,  who  rose  out 
of  the  six  thousand  in  a  week,  and  who  have  kept  at  the 
head  ever  since,  if  they  had  exerted  the  same  energy,  and 
showed  the  same  executive  ability  and  the  same  cleverness 
in  a  real  city,  would  be  real  mayors,  real  merchants,  and 
real  "prominent  citizens."  They  are  now  as  men  playing 
with  children's  toys  or  building  houses  of  cards.     Every 

114 


A  Three -Tear -Old  City 

now  and  then  a  Roger  Q.  Mills  or  a  Henry  W.  Grady  comes 
out  of  the  South  and  West,  and  among  these  politicians 
and  first  citizens  of  Oklahoma  City  are  men  who  only  need 
a  broader  canvas  and  a  greater  opportunity  to  show  what 
they  can  do.  There  are  as  many  of  these  as  there  are  un- 
couth "  Sockless  "  Simpsons,  or  noisy  Ingallses,  and  it  is 
pathetic  and  exasperating  to  see  men  who  would  excel  in 
a  great  metropolis,  and  who  could  live  where  they  could 
educate  their  children  and  themselves,  and  be  in  touch 
with  the  world  moving  about  them,  even  though  they  were 
not  of  it,  wasting  their  energies  in  a  desert  of  wooden 
houses  in  the  middle  of  an  ocean  of  prairie,  where  their 
point  of  view  is  bounded  by  the  railroad  tank  and  a  barb- 
wire  fence.  It  depends  altogether  on  the  man.  There  are 
men  who  are  just  big  enough  to  be  leading  citizens  of  a 
town  of  six  thousand  inhabitants,  who  are  meant  for  noth- 
ing else,  and  it  is  just  as  well  they  should  be  satisfied  with 
the  unsettled  existence  around  them  ;  but  it  would  be  better 
for  these  others  to  be  small  men  in  a  big  city  than  big  men 
on  a  prairie,  where  the  organ  in  the  front  room  is  their  art 
gallery,  book-store,  theatre,  church,  and  school,  and  where 
the  rustling  grass  of  the  prairie  greets  them  in  the  morn- 
ing and  goes  to  bed  with  them  at  night. 


EANCH  LIFE  IN  TEXAS 


Manch  Life  in  Texas 


RANCH    LIFE    IN    TEXAS 


I  HE  inhabited  part  of  a  ranch,  the  part  of  it  on 
which  the  people  who  own  it  live,  bears  about 
the  same  proportion  to  the  rest  of  the  ranch 
as  a  light-house  does  to  the  ocean  around  it. 
And  to  an  Eastern  man  it  appears  almost  as  lonely. 
Some  light -houses  are  isolated  in  the  ocean,  some  stand 
in  bays,  and  some  in  harbors ;  and  in  the  same  propor- 
tion the  ranches  in  Texas  differ  in  size,  from  principali- 
ties to  farms  no  larger  than  those  around  Jersey  City.  The 
simile  is  not  altogether  exact,  as  there  are  small  bodies  of 
men  constantly  leaving  the  "  ranch-house  "  and  wandering 
about  over  the  range,  sleeping  wherever  night  catches  them, 
and  in  this  way  different  parts  of  the  ranch  are  inhabited 
as  well  as  the  house  itself.  It  is  as  if  the  light -house- 
keeper sent  out  a  great  number  of  row-boats  to  look  after 
the  floating  buoys  or  to  catch  fish,  and  the  men  in  those 
boats  anchored  whenever  it  grew  dark,  and  returned  to  the 
light -house  variously  as  best  suited  their  convenience  or 
their  previous  orders. 

But  it  is  the  loneliness  of  the  life  that  will  most  certainly 
first  impress  the  visitor  from  closely  built  blocks  of  houses. 
Those  who  live  on  the  ranches  will  tell  you  that  they  do 
not  find  it  lonely,  and  that  they  grow  so  fond  of  the  great 

121 


The  West  from  a  Car -Window 

breezy  pastures  about  them  that  they  become  independent 
of  the  rest  of  mankind,  and  that  a  trip  to  the  city  once  a 
year  to  go  to  the  play  and  to  "  shop  "  is  all  they  ask  from 
the  big  world  lying  outside  of  the  barb-wire  fences.  I  am 
speaking  now  of  those  ranch-owners  only  who  live  on  the 
range,  and  not  of  those  who  hire  a  foreman,  and  spend 
their  time  and  money  in  the  San  Antonio  Club.  They  are 
no  more  ranchmen  than  the  absentee  landlord  who  lives  in 
his  London  house  is  a  gentleman  farmer. 

The  largest  ranch  in  the  United  States,  and  probably  in 
the  world,  owned  by  one  person,  is  in  Texas,  and  belongs 
to  Mrs.  Richard  King,  the  widow  of  Captain  Richard  King. 
It  lies  forty-five  miles  south  of  Corpus  Christi. 

The  ladies  who  come  to  call  on  Mrs.  King  drive  from 
her  front  gate,  over  as  good  a  road  as  any  in  Central  Park, 
for  ten  miles  before  they  arrive  at  her  front  door,  and  the 
butcher  and  baker  and  iceman,  if  such  existed,  would  have 
to  drive  thirty  miles  from  the  back  gate  before  they  reached 
her  kitchen.  This  ranch  is  bounded  by  the  Corpus  Christi 
Bay  for  forty  miles,  and  by  barb-wire  for  three  hundred 
miles  more.  It  covers  seven  hundred  thousand  acres  in 
extent,  and  one  hundred  thousand  head  of  cattle  and  three 
thousand  broodmares  wander  over  its  different  pastures. 

This  property  is  under  the  ruling  of  Robert  J.  Kleberg, 
Mrs.  King's  son-in-law,  and  he  has  under  him  a  superinten- 
dent, or,  as  the  Mexicans  call  one  who  holds  that  office,  a 
major-domo,  which  is  an  unusual  position  for  a  major-domo, 
as  this  major-domo  has  the  charge  of  three  hundred  cow- 
boys and  twelve  hundred  ponies  reserved  for  their  use. 
The  "  Widow's "  ranch,  as  the  Texans  call  it,  is  as  care- 
fully organized  and  moves  on  as  conservative  business  prin- 
ciples as  a  bank.     The  cowboys  do  not  ride  over  its  range 

122 


00    99 


Manch  Life  in  Texas 

with  both  legs  at  right  angles  to  the  saddle  and  shooting 
joyfully  into  the  air  with  both  guns  at  once.  Neither  do 
they  offer  the  casual  visitor  a  bucking  pony  to  ride,  and 
then  roll  around  on  the  prairie  with  glee  when  he  is  shot 
up  into  the  air  and  comes  down  on  his  collar-bone (j  they 
are  more  likely  to  bring  him  as  fine  a  Kentucky  thorough- 
bred as  ever  wore  a  blue  ribbon  around  the  Madison  Square 
Garden.  Neither  do  they  shoot  at  his  feet  to  see  if  he 
can  dance.  In  this  way  the  Eastern  man  is  constantly  find- 
ing his  dearest  illusions  abruptly  dispelled.  It  is  also  try- 
ing when  the  cowboys  stand  up  and  take  off  their  sombreros 
when  one  is  leaving  their  camp.  There  are  cowboys  and 
cowboys,  and  I  am  speaking  now  of  those  that  I  saw  on 
the  King  ranch. 

The  thing  that  the  wise  man  from  the  East  cannot  at 
first  understand  is  how  the  one  hundred  thousand  head  of 
cattle  wandering  at  large  over  the  range  are  ever  collected 
together.  He  sees  a  dozen  or  more  steers  here,  a  bunch  of 
horses  there,  and  a  single  steer  or  two  a  mile  off,  and  even 
as  he  looks  at  them  they  disappear  in  the  brush,  and  as 
far  as  his  chance  of  finding  them  again  would  be,  they 
might  as  well  stand  forty  miles  away  at  the  other  end  of 
the  ranch.  But  this  is  a  very  simple  problem  to  the  ranch- 
man. 

Mr.  Kleberg,  for  instance,  receives  an  order  from  a  firm 
in  Chicago  calling  for  one  thousand  head  of  cattle.  The 
breed  of  cattle  which  the  firm  wants  is  grazing  in  a  corner  of 
the  range  fenced  in  by  barb -wire,  and  marked  pale  blue  for 
convenience  on  a  beautiful  map  blocked  out  in  colors,  like 
a  patch -work  quilt,  which  hangs  in  Mr.  Kleberg's  office. 
When  the  order  is  received,  he  sends  a  Mexican  on  a  pony  to 
tell  the  men  near  that  particular  pale  blue  pasture  to  round 

125 


The  West  from  a  Car  Window 

up  one  thousand  head  of  cattle,  and  at  the  same  time  directs 
his  superintendent  to  send  in  a  few  days  as  many  cowboys 
to  that  pasture  as  are  needed  to  "  hold  "  one  thousand  head 
of  cattle  on  the  way  to  the  railroad  station.  The  boys  on 
the  pasture,  which  we  will  suppose  is  ten  miles  square,  will 
take  ten  of  their  number  and  five  extra  ponies  apiece,  which 
one  man  leads,  and  from  one  to  another  of  which  they 
shift  their  saddles  as  men  do  in  polo,  and  go  directly  to 
the  water-tanks  in  the  ten  square  miles  of  land.  A  cow 
will  not  often  wander  more  than  two  and  a  half  miles  from 
water,  and  so,  with  the  water  -  tank  (which  on  the  King 
ranch  may  be  either  a  well  with  a  wind-mill  or  a  dammed 
caiion  full  of  rain-water)  as  a  rendezvous,  the  finding  of  the 
cattle  is  comparatively  easy,  and  ten  men  can  round  up  one 
thousand  head  m  a  day  or  two.  When  they  have  them  all 
together,  the  cowboys  who  are  to  drive  them  to  the  station 
arrive,  and  take  them  off. 

At  the  station  the  agent  of  the  Chicago  firm  and  the 
agent  of  the  King  ranch  ride  through  the  herd  together, 
and  if  t^hey  disagree  as  to  the  fitness  of  any  one  or  more  of 
the  cattle,  an  outsider  is  called  in,  and  his  decision  is  final. 
The  cattle  are  then  driven  on  to  the  cars,  and  Mr.  Kleberg's 
responsibility  is  at  an  end. 

In  the  spring  there  is  a  general  rounding  up,  and  thou- 
sands and  thousands  of  steers  are  brought  in  from  the  dif- 
ferent pastures,  and  those  for  which  contracts  have  been 
made  during  the  winter  are  shipped  off  to  the  markets,  and 
the  calves  are  branded. 

Texas  is  the  great  breeding  State  from  which  the  cattle 
are  sent  north  to  the  better  pasture  land  of  Kansas,  Mon- 
tana, and  Wyoming  Territory,  to  be  fattened  up  for  the 
markets.     The  breeding  goes  on  throughout  the  year,  five 

126 


A    SHATTERED    IDOL 


Ranch  Life  in  Texas 

bulls  being  pastured  with  every  three  hundred  cows,  in 
pastures  of  from  one  thousand  to  ten  thousand  acres  in  ex- 
tent. About  ninety  per  cent,  of  the  cows  calve,  and  the 
branding  of  these  calves  is  one  of  the  most  important  duties 
of  the  spring  work.  They  are  driven  into  a  pen  through  a 
wooden  chute,  and  as  they  leave  the  chute  are  caught  by 
the  legs  and  thrown  over  on  the  side,  and  one  of  a  dozen 
hot  irons  burning  in  an  open  fire  is  pressed  against  the 
flank,  and,  on  the  King  ranch,  on  the  nose. 

An  animal  bearing  one  of  the  rough  hall-marks  of  the 
ranchman  is  more  respected  than  a  dog  with  a  silver  collar 
around  his  neck,  and  the  number  of  brands  now  registered 
in  the  State  capital  runs  up  to  the  thousands.  On  some 
ranches  each  of  the  family  has  his  or  her  especial  brand ; 
and  one  young  girl  who  came  out  in  New  York  last  winter 
is  known  throughout  lower  Texas  only  as  "  the  owner  of 
the  Triangle  brand,"  and  is  much  respected  in  consequence, 
as  it  is  borne  by  thousands  of  wandering  cattle.  The  sep- 
arating of  the  cattle  at  the  spring  round-up  is  accomplished 
on  the  King  ranch  by  means  of  a  cutting  pen,  a  somewhat 
ingenious  trap  at  the  end  of  a  chute.  One  end  of  this 
chute  opens  on  the  prairie,  and  the  other  runs  into  four 
different  pens  guarded  by  a  swinging  gate,  so  hung  that  by 
a  movement  of  the  foot  by  the  man  sitting  over  the  gate 
the  chute  can  be  extended  into  any  one  of  the  four  pens. 
With  this  mules,  steers,  horses,  and  ponies  can  be  fed  into 
the  chute  together,  and  each  arrive  in  his  proper  pen  until 
the  number  for  which  the  different  orders  call  is  filled. 

It  is  rather  difficult  to  imagine  one  solitary  family  oc- 
cupying a  territory  larger  than  some  of  the  Eastern  States 
— an  area  of  territory  that  would  in  the  East  support  a 
State  capital,  with  a  Governor  and  Legislature,  and  numer- 


The  West  from  a  Car  -  Window 

ous  small  towns,  with  competing  railroad  systems  and  rival 
baseball  nines.  And  all  that  may  be  said  of  this  side  of 
the  question  of  ranch  life  is  that  when  we  are  within  Mrs. 
King's  house  we  would  imagine  it  was  one  of  twenty 
others  touching  shoulder  to  shoulder  on  Madison  Avenue, 
and  that  the  distant  cry  of  the  coyotes  at  night  is  all  that 
tells  us  that  the  hansoms  are  not  rushing  up  and  down  be- 
fore the  door. 


"^^Kc^V^ll 


SNAPPING  A  ROPE  ON  A  HORSE 'S  FOOT 


Ranch  Life  in  Texas 

In  the  summer  this  ranch  is  covered  with  green,  and  little 
yellow  and  pink  flowers  carpet  the  range  for  miles.  It  is 
at  its  best  then,  and  is  as  varied  and  beautiful  in  its 
changes  as  the  ocean. 

The  ranches  that  stretch  along  and  away  from  the  Rio 
Grande  River  are  very  different  from  this ;  they  are  owned 
by  Mexicans,  and  every  one  on  the  ranch  is  a  Mexican  ;  the 
country  is  desolate  here,  and  dead  and  dying  cattle  are 
everywhere. 

No  ranch  -  owner,  whether  he  has  fifty  thousand  or  five 
hundred  head  of  cattle,  will  ever  attempt  to  help  one  that 
may  be  ailing  or  dying.  This  seems  to  one  who  has  been 
taught  the  value  of  "three  acres  and  a  cow  "  the  height  of 
extravagance,  and  to  show  lack  of  feeling.  But  they  will 
all  tell  you  it  is  useless  to  try  to  save  a  starving  or  a  sick 
animal,  and  also  that  it  is  not  worth  the  trouble,  there  are 
so  many  more.  In  one  place  I  saw  where  a  horse  had  fallen 
on  the  trail,  and  the  first  man  who  passed  had  driven 
around  it,  and  the  next,  and  the  next,  until  a  new  trail  was 
made,  and  at  the  time  I  passed  over  this  new  trail,  I 
could  see  the  old  one  showing  through  the  ribs  of  the  horse's 
skeleton.  In  the  East,  I  think,  they  would  have  at  least 
pulled  the  horse  out  of  the  road. 

But  a  live  horse  or  steer  is  just  as  valuable  in  Texas  as 
in  the  East — even  more  so. 

The  conductor  on  the  road  from  Corpus  Christi  sprang 
from  his  chair  in  the  baggage  car  one  day,  and  shouted  to 
the  engineer  that  he  must  be  careful,  for  we  were  on  Major 
Fenton's  range,  and  must  look  out  for  the  major's  prize  bull ; 
and  the  train  continued  at  half  speed  accordingly  until  the 
conductor  espied  the  distinguished  animal  well  to  the  left,  and 
shouted :  "All  right,  Bill !    We've  passed  him,  let  her  out." 

131 


The  West  from  a  Car -Window 

The  Randado  ranch  is  typical  of  the  largest  of  the  Mex- 
ican ranches  which  lie  within  the  five  hundred  miles  along 
the  Rio  Grande.  It  embraces  eighty  thousand  acres,  with 
twenty-five  thousand  head  of  cattle,  and  it  has  its  store,  its 
little  mission,  its  tank,  twenty  or  more  adobe  houses  with 
thatched  roofs,  and  its  little  graveyard.  There  is  a  post 
office  here,  and  a  school,  where  very  pretty  little  Mexicans 
recited  proudly  in  English  words  of  four  letters.  Around 
them  lie  the  cactus  and  dense  chaparral  cut  up  with  dusky 
trails,  and  the  mail  comes  but  twice  a  week.  But  every 
Saturday  the  vaqueros  come  in  from  the  range,  and  there 
is  dancing  on  the  bare  clay  floor  of  one  of  the  huts,  and 
the  school-master  postmaster  sings  to  them  every  evening 
on  his  guitar,  and  once  a  month  the  priest  comes  on  horse- 
back to  celebrate  mass  in  the  adobe  mission. 

Around  San  Antonio  are  many  ranches.  These  are  more 
like  large  farms,  and  there  are  high  trees  and  hills  and  a 
wonderful  variety  of  flowers.  There  are  also  antelope  and 
wild  fowl  for  those  who  love  to  hunt,  and  the  scalp  of  a 
coyote  brings  fifty  cents  to  those  who  care  for  money ;  for 
the  coyotes  pull  down  the  young  calves.  The  life  on  the 
range  is  not  at  all  lonely  here,  for  the  women  on  the  ranch 
do  not  mind  riding  in  twelve  miles  to  a  dance  in  San  An- 
tonio, and  there  are  always  people  coming  out  from  town 
to  remain  a  day  or  two.  The  more  successful  of  these 
ranches  are  like  English  country-houses  in  their  free  hos- 
pitality and  in  the  constant  changing  of  the  guests. 

Many  of  these  about  San  Antonio  are  owned,  in  fact,  by 
Englishmen,  although  a  record  of  the  failures  of  the  Eng- 
lish colonists  of  good  family  and  of  well-known  youths 
from  New  York  would  make  a  book,  and  a  very  sad  one. 
There  was  a  whole  colony  of  English  families  and  unat- 

132 


Ranch  Life  in  Texas 

tached  younger  sons  at  Boerne,  just  outside  of  San  Antonio, 
a  few  years  ago ;  but  they  preferred  cutting  to  leg  to  cut- 
ting out  cattle,  and  used  the  ponies  to  chase  polo  balls,  and 
their  money  soon  went,  and  they  followed.  Some  went  to 
England  as  prodigal  sons,  some  to  driving  hacks  and  dealing 
faro,  and  others  into  the  army.  A  few  succeeded,  and  are 
still  at  Boerne,  notably  a  cousin  of  Thomas  Hughes,  who 
founded  the  ill-fated  English  colony  of  Rugby,  in  Tennessee. 

Of  the  New  York  men  who  came  on  to  San  Antonio,  the 
two  Jacob  boys  are  mo^'e  frequently  and  more  heartily 
spoken  of  by  the  Texans  than  almost  any  other  Eastern 
men  who  have  been  there.  They  did  not,  as  the  others  so 
often  do,  hire  a  foreman,  and  spend  their  days  in  the  San 
Antonio  Club,  but  rode  the  ranch  themselves,  and  could 
cut  out  and  brand  and  rope  with  any  of  those  born  on  a 
range.  Their  ranch,  the  Santa  Marta,  still  flourishes,  al- 
though they  have  become  absentee  landlords,  and  have 
given  up  chasing  wild  steers  in  Texas  in  favor  of  the  foxes 
at  Rockaway. 

A  ranch  which  marks  the  exception  in  the  rule  of  failures 
of  our  English  cousins  is  that  of  Alfred  Giles  in  Kendal 
and  Kerr  counties.  It  covers  about  thirteen  thousand  acres, 
and  a  very  fine  breed  of  polled  Angus  cattle  are  bred  on  it. 
Indeed,  the  tendency  all  over  Texas  at  present  is  to  cultivate 
certain  well-known  breeds,  and  not,  as  formerly,  to  be  con- 
tent with  the  famous  long-horned  steer  and  the  Texan  pony. 
Mr.  Giles's  ranch,  the  Ilillingdon,  looks  in  the  summer, 
when  the  imported  Scotch  cattle  are  grazing  over  it,  like  a 
bit  out  of  the  Lake  country.  Walnut,  cherry,  ash,  and  oak 
grow  on  this  ranch,  and  the  maidenhair-fern  is  everywhere, 
and  the  flowers  are  boundless  in  profusion  and  variety. 

The  coming  of  the  barb-wire  fence  and  the  railroad  killed 
13d 


The  West  from  a  Car  -  Window 

the  cowboy  as  a  picturesque  element  of  recklessness  and 
lawlessness  in  south-west  Texas.  It  suppressed  him  and 
localized  him  and  limited  him  to  his  own  range,  and  made 
his  revolver  merely  an  ornament.  Before  the  barb -wire 
fence  appeared,  the  cattle  wandered  from  one  range  to  an- 
other, and  the  man  of  fifteen  thousand  acres  would  over- 
stock, knowing  that  when  his  cattle  could  not  find  enough 
pasturage  on  his  range  they  would  move  over  to  the  range 
of  his  more  prosperous  neighbor.  Consequently,  when  the 
men  who  could  afford  it  began  to  fence  their  ranges,  the 
smaller  owners  who  had  over -bred,  saw  that  their  cattle 
would  starve,  and  so  cut  the  fences  in  order  to  get  back 
to  the  pastures  which  they  had  used  so  long.  This,  and 
the  shutting  off  of  water-tanks  and  of  long- used  trails 
brought  on  the  barb-wire  fence  wars  which  raged  long  and 
fiercely  between  the  cowboys  and  fence  men  of  rival  ranches 
and  the  Texas  Rangers.  The  barb-wire  fences  did  more 
than  this ;  they  shut  off  the  great  trails  that  stretched  from 
Corpus  Christi  through  the  Pan  Handle  of  Texas,  and  on 
up  through  New  Mexico  and  Colorado  and  through  the 
Indian  Territory  to  Dodge  City.  The  coming  of  the  rail- 
road also  made  this  trailing  of  cattle  to  the  markets  super- 
fluous, and  almost  destroyed  one  of  the  most  remarkable 
features  of  the  West.  This  trail  was  not,  of  course,  an 
actual  trail,  and  marked  as  such,  but  a  general  driveway 
forty  miles  wide  and  thousands  of  iipiles  long.  The  herds 
of  cattle  that  were  driven  over  it  numbered  from  three 
hundred  to  three  thousand  head,  and  were  moving  con- 
stantly from  the  early  spring  to  the  late  fall. 

No  caravan  route  in  the  far  Eastern  countries  can  equal 
this  six  months'  journey  through  three  different  States,  and 
through  all   changes  of  weather  and  climate,  and   m  the 

?36 


Ranch  Life  in  Texas 

face  of  constant  danger  and  anxiety.  This  procession  of 
countless  cattle  on  their  slow  march  to  the  north  was  one 
of  the  most  interesting  and  distinctive  features  of  the  West. 
An  "outfit"  for  this  expedition  would  consist  of  as 
many  cowboys  as  were  needed  to  hold  the  herd  together,  a 
wagon,  with  the  cook  and  the  tents,  and  extra  ponies  for 
the  riders.  In  the  morning  the  camp -wagon  pushed  on 
ahead  to  a  suitable  resting-place  for  the  night,  and  when 
the  herd  arrived  later,  moving,  on  an  average,  fifteen  miles 
a  day,  and  grazing  as  it  went,  the  men  would  find  the  sup- 
per ready  and  the  tents  pitched.  And  then  those  who 
were  to  watch  that  night  would  circle  slowly  around  the 
great  army  of  cattle,  driving  them  in  closer  and  closer  to- 
gether, and  singing  as  they  rode,  to  put  them  to  sleep. 
This  seems  an  absurdity  to  the  Eastern  mind,  but  the  fa- 
miliar sounds  quieted  and  satisfied  these  great  stupid  ani- 
mals that  can  be  soothed  like  a  child  with  a  nursery  rhyme, 
and  when  frightened  cannot  be  stopped  by  a  river.  The 
boys  rode  slowly  and  patiently  until  one  and  then  an- 
other of  the  herd  would  stumble  clumsily  to  the  ground, 
and  others  near  would  follow,  and  at  last  the  whole  great 
herd  would  be  silent  and  immovable  in  sleep.  But  the 
watchfulness  of  the  sentries  could  never  relax.  Some 
chance  noise — the  shaking  of  a  saddle,  some  cry  of  a  wild 
animal,  or  the  scent  of  distant  water  carried  by  a  chance 
breeze  across  the  prairie,  or  nothing  but  sheer  blind  wan- 
tonness— would  start  one  of  the  sleeping  mass  to  his  feet 
with  a  snort,  and  in  an  instant  the  whole  great  herd  would 
go  tearing  madly  over  the  prairie,  tossing  their  horns  and 
bellowing,  and  filled  with  a  wild,  unreasoning  terror.  And 
then  the  skill  and  daring  of  the  cowboy  was  put  to  its 
severest  test,  as  he  saw  his  master's  income  disappearing 


The  West  from  a  Car -Window 

towards  a  canon  or  a  river,  or  to  lose  itself  in  the  brush. 
And  the  cowboy  who  tried  to  head  off  and  drive  back 
this  galloping  army  of  frantic  animals  had  to  ride  a  race 
that  meant  his  life  if  his  horse  made  a  misstep ;  and  as  the 
horse's  feet  often  did  slip,  there  would  be  found  in  the 
morning  somewhere  in  the  trail  of  the  stampeding  cattle  a 
horrid  mass  of  blood  and  flesh  and  leather. 

Do  you  wonder,  then,  after  this  half-year  of  weary,  rest- 
less riding  by  day,  and  sleepless  anxiety  and  watching 
under  the  stars  by  night,  that  when  the  lights  of  Dodge 
City  showed  across  the  prairie,  the  cowboy  kicked  his  feet 
out  of  his  stirrups,  drove  the  blood  out  of  the  pony's  sides, 
and  "  came  in  to  town  "  with  both  guns  going  at  once,  and 
yelling  as  though  the  pent-up  speech  of  the  past  six  months 
of  loneliness  was  striving  for  proper  utterance? 

The  cowboy  cannot  be  overestimated  as  a  picturesque 
figure ;  all  that  has  been  written  about  him  and  all  the  il- 
lustrations that  have  been  made  of  him  fail  to  familiarize 
him,  and  to  spoil  the  picture  he  makes  when  one  sees  him 
for  the  first  time  racing  across  a  range  outlined  against  the 
sky,  with  his  handkerchief  flying  out  behind,  his  sombrero 
bent  back  by  the  wind,  and  his  gauntlets  and  broad  leather 
leggings  showing  above  and  at  the  side  of  his  galloping 
pony.  And  his  deep  seat  in  the  saddle,  with  his  legs  hang- 
ing straight  to  the  long  stirrups,  the  movement  of  his  body 
as  it  sways  and  bends,  and  his  utter  unconsciousness  of 
the  animal  beneath  him  would  make  a  German  riding-master, 
an  English  jockey,  or  the  best  cross-country  rider  of  a  Long 
Island  hunting  club  shake  his  head  m  envy  and  despair. 

He  is  a  fantastic-looking  individual,  and  one  suspects  he 
wears  the  strange  garments  he  affects  because  he  knows 
they  are  most  becoming.     But  there  is  a  reason  for  each 

140 


Ranch  Life  in  Texas 

of  the  different  parts  of  his  apparel,  in  spite  of  rather  than 
on  account  of  their  picturesqueness.  The  sombrero  shades 
his  face  from  the  rain  and  sun,  the  rattlesnake-skin  around 
it  keeps  it  on  his  head,  the  broad  kerchief  that  he  wears 
knotted-  around  his  throat  protects  his  neck  from  the  heat, 
and  the  leather  leggings  which  cover  the  front  of  his  legs 
protect  them  from  the  cactus  in  Texas,  and  in  the  North, 
where  the  fur  and  hair  are  left  on  the  leather,  from  the 
sleet  and  rain  as  he  rides  against  them.  The  gauntlets 
certainly  seem  too  military  for  such  rough  service,  but  any 
one  who  has  had  a  sheet  rope  run  through  his  hands,  can 
imagine  how  a  lasso  cuts  when  a  wild  horse  is  pulling  on 
the  other  end  of  it.  His  cartridge-belt  and  his  revolver  are 
on  some  ranches  superfluous,  but  cattle-men  say  they  have 
found  that  on  those  days  when  they  took  this  toy  away 
from  their  boys,  they  sulked  and  fretted  and  went  about 
their  work  half-heartedly,  so  that  they  believe  it  pays  better 
to  humor  them,  and  to  allow  them  to  relieve  the  monotony 
of  the  day's  vigil  by  popping  at  jack-rabbits  and  learning 
to  twirl  their  revolver  around  their  first  finger.  Of  the 
many  compliments  I  have  heard  paid  by  officers  and  privates 
and  ranch-owners  and  cowboys  to  Mr.  Frederic  Remington, 
the  one  which  was  sure  to  follow  the  others  was  that  he 
never  made  the  mistake  of  putting  the  revolver  on  the  left 
side.  But  as  I  went  North,  his  anonymous  admirers  would 
make  this  same  comment,  but  with  regret  that  he  should 
be  guilty  of  such  an  error.  I  could  not  understand  this  at 
first  until  I  found  that  the  two  sides  of  the  shield  lay  in 
the  Northern  cowboy's  custom  of  wearing  his  pistol  on  the 
left,  and  of  the  Texan's  of  carrying  it  on  the  right.  The 
Northern  man  argues  on  this  important  matter  that  the 
sword  has  always  been  worn  on  the  left,  that  it  is  easier  to 

143 


The  West  from  a  Car  -  Window 

reach  across  and  sweep  the  pistol  to  either  the  left  or  right, 
and  that  with  this  motion  it  is  at  once  in  position.  The 
Texan  says  this  is  absurd,  and  quotes  the  fact  that  the 
pistol-pocket  has  always  been  on  the  right,  and  that  the 
lasso  and  reins  are  in  the  way  of  the  left  hand.  It  is  too 
grave  a  question  of  etiquette  for  any  one  who  has  not  at 
least  six  notches  on  his  pistol-butt  to  decide. 

Although  Mr.  Kleberg's  cowboys  have  been  shorn  of 
their  pistols,  their  prowess  as  ropers  still  remains  with 
them.  They  gave  us  an  exhibition  of  this  feature  of  their 
calling  which  was  as  remarkable  a  performance  in  its  way 
as  I  have  ever  seen.  The  audience  seated  itself  on  the  top 
of  a  seven -rail  fence,  and  thrilled  with  excitement.  At 
least  a  part  of  it  did.  I  fancy  Mr.  Kleberg  was  slightly 
bored,  but  he  was  too  polite  to  show  it.-  Sixty  wild  horses 
were  sent  into  a  pen  eighty  yards  across,  and  surrounded 
by  the  seven -rail  fence.  Into  this  the  cowboys  came, 
mounted  on  their  ponies,  and  at  Mr.  Kleberg's  word  lassoed 
whichever  horse  he  designated.  They  threw  their  ropes 
as  a  man  tosses  a  quoit,  drawing  it  back  at  the  instant  it 
closed  over  the  horse's  head,  and  not,  as  the  beginner  does, 
allowing  the  noose  to  settle  loosely,  and  to  tighten  through 
the  horse's  effort  to  move  forward.  This  roping  was  not 
so  impressive  as  what  followed,  as  the  ropes  were  short, 
owing  to  the  thick  undergrowth,  which  prevents  long 
throws,  such  as  are  made  in  the  North,  and  as  the  pony  was 
trained  to  suit  its  gait  to  that  of  the  animal  it  was  pursuing, 
and  to  turn  and  dodge  with  it,  and  to  stop  with  both  fore- 
feet planted  firmly  when  the  rope  had  settled  around  the 
other  horse's  neck. 

But  when  they  had  shown  us  how  very  simple  a  matter 
this  was,  they  were  told  to  dismount  and  to  rope  the  horses 

144 


l^&c^^r 


Ranch  Life  in  Texas 

by  whichever  foot  Mr.  Kleberg  choose  to  select.  This  was 
a  real  combat,  and  was  as  intensely  interesting  a  contest 
between  a  thoroughly  wild  and  terrified  animal  and  a  per- 
fectly cooJ  man  as  one  can  see,  except,  perhaps,  at  a  bull- 
fight. There  is  something  in  a  contest  of  this  sort  that 
has  appealed  to  something  in  all  human  beings  who  have 
blood  in  their  veins  from  the  days  when  one  gladiator  fol- 
lowed another  with  a  casting-net  and  a  trident  around  the 
arena  down  to  the  present,  when  "  Peter "  Poe  drops  on 
one  knee  and  tries  to  throw  Heflflefinger  over  his  shoulder. 
In  this  the  odds  were  in  favor  of  the  horse,  as  a  cowboy 
on  the  ground  is  as  much  out  of  his  element  as  a  sailor  on 
a  horse,  and  looks  as  strangely.  The  boys  moved  and  ran 
and  backed  away  as  quickly  as  their  heavy  leggings  would 
permit ;  but  the  horses  moved  just  twice  as  quickly,  turn- 
ing and  jumping  and  rearing,  and  then  racing  away  out  of 
reach  again  at  a  gallop.  But  whenever  they  came  within 
range  of  the  ropes,  they  feii.  The  roping  around  the  neck 
had  seemed  simple.  The  rope  then  was  cast  in  a  loop  with 
a  noose  at  one  end  as  easily  as  one  throws  a  trout  line. 
Bu.u  now  the  rope  had  to  be  hurled  as  quickly  and  as  surely 
as  a  man  sends  a  ball  to  first  base  when  the  batsman  is 
running,  except  that  the  object  at  which  the  cowboy  aims 
is, moving  at  a  gallop,  and  one  of  a  galloping  horse's  four 
feet  is  a  most  uncertain  bull's-eye. 

It  is  almost  impossible  to  describe  the  swiftness  with 
which  the  rope  moved.  It  seemed  to  skim  across  the 
ground  as  a  skipping-rope  does  when  a  child  holds  one  end 
of  it  and  shakes  the  rope  up  and  down  to  make  it  look  like 
a  snake  coiling  and  undulating  over  the  pavement. 

One  instant  the  rope  would  hang  coiled  from  the  thrower's 
right  hand  as  he  ran  forward  to  meet  the  horse,  moving  it 

141 


The  West  from  a  Car  -  Window 

slowly,  with  a  twist  of  his  wrist,  to  keep  it  from  snarling, 
and  the  next  it  would  spin  out  along  the  ground,  with  the 
noose  rolling  like  a  hoop  in  the  front,  and  would  close  with 
a  snap  over  the  horse's  hoof,  and  the  cowboy  would  throw 
himself  back  to  take  the  shock,  and  the  horse  would  come 
down  on  its  side  as  though  the  ground  had  slipped  from 
under  it. 

The  roping  around  the  neck  was  the  easy  tossing  of  a 
quoit;  the  roping  around  the  leg  was  the  angry  snapping 
of  a  whip. 

There  are  thousands  of  other  ranches  in  the  United  States 
besides  those  in  Texas,  and  other  cowboys,  but  the  general 
characteristics  are  the  same  in  all,  and  it  is  only  general 
characteristics  that  one  can  attempt  to  give. 


VI 

ON  AN  INDIAN  RESERVATION 


On  an  Indian  Reservation 


VI 

ON    AN   INDIAN    RESERVATION 

I  HE  American  Indian  may  be  considered  either 
seriously  or  lightly,  according  to  one's  incli- 
Ijfb  nation  and  opportunities.  He  may  be  taken 
seriously,  like  the  Irish  question,  by  politi- 
cians and  philanthropists;  of  lightly,  as  a  picturesque 
and  historic  relic  of  the  past,  as  one  regards  the  beef -eaters, 
the  Tower,  or  the  fishwives  at  Scheveningen.  There  are 
a  great  many  Indians  and  a  great  many  reservations,  and 
some  are  partly  civilized  and  others  are  not,  and  the  differ- 
ent tribes  differ  in  speech  and  manner  of  life  as  widely  as 
in  the  South  the  clay-eater  of  Alabama  differs  from  a  gen- 
tleman of  one  of  the  first  families  of  Virginia.  Any  one 
who  wishes  to  speak  with  authority  on  the  American  Indian 
must  learn  much  more  concerning  him  than  the  names  of 
the  tribes  and  the  agencies. 

The  Indian  will  only  be  considered  here  lightly  and  as  a 
picturesque  figure  of  the  West. 

Many  years  ago  the  people  of  the  East  took  their  idea  of 
the  Indian  from  Cooper's  novels  and  "  Hiawatha,"  and  pict- 
ured him  shooting  arrows  into  herds  of  buffalo,  and  sitting 
in  his  wigwam  with  many  scalp-locks  drying  on  his  shield 
in  the  sun  outside.  But  they  know  better  than  that  now. 
Travellers  from  the  West  have  told  them  that  this  picture 

161 


The  West  from  a  Car -Window 


THE    CHEYENNE   TYPE 


belongs  to  the  past,  and  they  have  been  taught  to  look 
upon  the  Indian  as  a  "  problem,"  and  to  consider  him  as 
either  a  national  nuisance  or  as  a  much-cheated  and  ill-used 
brother.  They  think  of  him,  if  they  think  of  him  at  all,  as 
one  who  has  fallen  from  his  high  estate,  and  who  is  a  dirty 
individual  hanging  around  agencies  in  a  high  hat  and  a  red 
shirt  with  a  whiskey-bottle  under  his  arm,  waiting  a  chance 

152 


On  an  Indian  Reservation 

to  beg  or  steal.  The  Indian  I  saw  was  not  at  all  like  this, 
but  was  still  picturesque,  not  only  in  what  he  wore,  but  in 
what  he  did  and  said,  and  was  full  of  a  dignity  that  came 
up  at  unexpected  moments,  and  was  as  suspicious  or  trust- 
ful as  a  child. 

It  is  impossible  when  one  sees  a  blanket  Indian  walk- 
ing haughtily  about  in  his  buckskin,  with  his  face  painted 
in  many  colors  and  with  feathers  in  his  hair,  not  to  think 
that  he  has  dressed  for  the  occasion,  or  goes  thus  equipped 
because  his  forefathers  did  so,  and  not  because  he  finds  it 
comfortable.  When  you  have  seen  a  particular  national  cos- 
tume only  in  pictures  and  photographs,  it  is  always  some- 
thing of  a  surprise  to  find  people  wearing  it  with  every-day 
matter-of-course  ease,  as  though  they  really  preferred  kilts 
or  sabots  or  moccasins  to  the  gear  to  which  we  are  accus- 
tomed at  home.  And  the  Indians  in  their  fantastic  mixture 
of  colors  and  beads  and  red  flannel  and  feathers  seemed  so 
theatrical  at  first  that  I  could  not  understand  why  the  army 
officers  did  not  look  back  over  their  shoulders  when  one  of 
these  young  braves  rode  by.  The  first  Indians  I  saw  were 
at  Fort  Reno,  where  there  is  an  agency  for  the  Cheyennes 
and  Arapahoes.  This  reservation  is  in  the  Oklahoma  Ter- 
ritory, but  the  Government  has  bought  it  from  the  Indiansy 
for  a  half-dollar  an  acre,  and  it  is  to  be  opened  to  white  set- 
tlers. The  country  is  very  beautiful,  and  the  tall  grass  of 
the  prairie,  which  hides  a  pony,  and  shows  only  the  red 
blanketed  figure  on  his  back,  and  over  which  in  the  clear 
places  the  little  prairie-dogs  scamper,  and  where  the  red 
buttes  stand  out  against  the  sky,  and  show  an  edge  as 
sharp  and  curving  as  the  prow  of  a  man-of-war,  gives  one  a 
view  of  a  West  one  seems  to  have  visited  and  known  inti- 
mately through  the  illustrated  papers. 

158 


The  West  from  a  Car  -  Window 

I  had  gone  to  Fort  Reno  to  see  the  beef  issue  which 
takes  place  there  every  two  weeks,  when  the  steers  and  the 
other  things  which  make  up  the  Indian's  rations  are  dis- 
tributed by  the  agent.  I  missed  the  issue  by  four  hours, 
and  had  to  push  on  to  Anadarko,  where  another  beef  issue 
was  to  come  off  three  days  later,  which  was  trying,  as  I  had 
met  few  men  more  interesting  and  delightful  than  the  of- 
ficers at  the  post-trader's  mess.  But  I  was  fortunate,  in  the 
short  time  in  which  I  was  at  Fort  Reno,  in  stumbling  upon 
an  Indian  council.  Two  lieutenants  and  a  surgeon  and  I 
had  ridden  over  to  the  Indian  agency,  and  although  they 
allow  no  beer  on  an  Indian  reservation,  the  surgeon  had 
hopes.  It  had  been  a  long  ride  —  partly  through  water, 
partly  over  a  dusty  trail — and  it  was  hot.  But  if  the  agent 
had  a  private  store  for  visitors,  he  was  not  in  a  position  to 
offer  it,  for  his  room  was  crowded  with  chiefs  of  renown 
and  high  degree.  They  sat  in  a  circle  around  his  desk 
on  the  floor,  or  stood  against  the  wall  smoking  solemnly. 
When  they  approved  of  what  the  speaker  said,  they  grunted ; 
and  though  that  is  the  only  word  for  it,  they  somehow 
made  that  form  of  "  hear,  hear,"  impressive.  Those  chiefs 
who  spoke  talked  in  a  spitting,  guttural  fashion,  far  down 
the  throat,  and  without  gestures;  and  the  son  of  one  of 
them,  a  boy  from  Carlisle,  in  a  gray  ready-made  suit  and 
sombrero,  translated  a  five-minutes'  speech,  which  had  all 
the  dignity  of  Salvini's  address  to  the  Senators,  by  :  "And 
Red  Wolf  he  says  he  thinks  it  isn't  right."  Cloud-Shield 
rose  and  said  the  chiefs  were  glad  to  see  that  the  officers 
from  the  fort  were  in  the  room,  as  that  meant  that  the 
Indian  would  have  fair  treatment,  and  that  the  officers  were 
always  the  Indians'  best  friends,  and  were  respected  in 
times  of  peace  as  friends,  and  in  times  of  war  as  enemies. 

154 


On  an  Indian  Reservation 

After  which,  the  oflScers,  considering  guiltily  the  real  object 
of  their  visit,  and  feeling  properly  abashed,  took  off  their 
hats  and  tried  to  look  as  though  they  deserved  it,  which,  as 
a  rule,  they  do.  It  may  be  of  interest,  in  view  of  an  Indian 
outbreak,  to  know  that  this  council  of  the  chiefs  was  to 
protest  against  the  cutting  down  of  the  rations  of  the 
Cheyennes  and  the  Arapahoes.  Last  year  it  cost  the  Gov- 
ernment one  hundred  and  thirteen  thousand  dollars  to  feed 
them,  and  this  year  Commissioner  Martin,  with  a  fine  spirit 
of  economy,  proposes  to  re*duce  this  by  just  one-half.  This 
means  hunger  and  illness,  and  in  some  cases  death. 

"  He  says,"  translated  the  boy  interpreter,  gazing  at  the 
ceiling,  "that  they  would  like  to  speak  to  the  people  at 
Washington  about  this  thing,  for  it  is  not  good." 

The  agent  traced  figures  over  his  desk  with  his  pen. 

"  Well,  I  can't  do  anything,"  he  said,  at  last.  "  All  I  can 
do  is  to  let  the  people  at  Washington  know  what  they  say. 
But  to  send  a  commission  all  the  way  to  Washington  will 
take  a  great  deal  of  money,  and  the  cost  of  it  will  have  to 
come  out  of  their  allowance.  Tell  them  that.  Tell  them 
I'll  write  on  about  it.     That's  all  I  can  do." 

That  night  the  chiefs  came  solemnly  across  parade,  and 
said  "  How !"  grimly  to  the  orderly  in  front  of  the  colonel's 
headquarters. 

"You  see,"  said  the  officers,  "they  have  come  to  com- 
plain, but  the  colonel  cannot  help  them.  If  Martin  wants 
a  war,  he  is  going  just  the  best  way  in  the  world  to  get  it, 
and  then  we  shall  have  to  go  out  and  shoot  them,  poor 
devils !" 

I  was  very  sorry  to  leave  Fort  Keno,  not  only  on  account 
of  the  officers  there,  but  because  the  ride  to  Anadarko  must 
be  made  in  stages  owned  by  a  Mr.  Williamson.   This  is  not 

157 


The  West  from  a  Car  -  Window 

intended  as  an  advertisement  for  Mr.  Williamson's  stages.. 
He  does  not  need  it,  for  he  is,  so  his  drivers  tell  me,  very 
rich  indeed,  and  so  economical  that  he  makes  them  buy 
their  own  whips.  Every  one  who  has  travelled  through  the 
Indian  Territory  over  Mr.  Williamson's  routes  wishes  that 
sad  things  may  happen  to  him;  but  no  one,  I  believe,  would 
be  so  wicked  as  to  hope  he  may  ever  have  to  ride  in  one  of 
his  own  stages.  The  stage-coach  of  the  Indian  Territory 
lacks  the  romance  of  those  that  Dick  Turpin  stopped,  or  of 
the  Deadwood  coach,  or  of  those  that  Yuba  Bill  drives  for 
Bret  Harte  with  four  horses,  with  gamblers  on  top  and 
road-agents  at  the  horses'  heads.  They  are  only  low  four- 
wheeled  wagons  with  canvas  sides  and  top,  and  each  revo- 
lution of  the  wheels  seems  to  loosen  every  stick  and  nail, 
and  throws  you  sometimes  on  top  of  the  driver,  and  some- 
times the  driver  on  top  of  you.  They  hold  together, 
though,  and  float  bravely  through  creeks,  and  spin  down 
the  side  of  a  canon  on  one  wheel,  and  toil  up  the  other 
side  on  two,  and  at  such  an  angle  that  you  see  the  sun 
bisected  by  the  wagon-tongue.  At  night  the  stage  seems 
to  plunge  a  little  more  than  in  the  day,  and  you  spend  it  in 
trying  to  sleep  with  your  legs  under  the  back  seat  and  your 
head  on  the  one  in  front,  while  the  driver,  who  wants  to 
sleep  and  cannot,  shouts  profanely  to  his  mules  and  very 
near  to  your  ear  on  the  other  side  of  the  canvas. 

Anadarko  is  a  town  of  six  stores,  three  or  four  frame 
houses,  the  Indian  agent's  store  and  office,  and  the  City 
Hotel.  Seven  houses  in  the  West  make  a  city.  I  said  I 
thought  this  was  the  worst  hotel  in  the  Indian  Territory, 
but  the  officers  at  Fort  Sill,  who  have  travelled  more  than 
T,  think  it  is  the  worst  in  the  United  States.  It  is  possible 
that  they  are  right.    There  are  bluffs  and  bunches  of  timber 

158 


On  an  Indian  Reservation 

around  Anadarko,  but  the  prairie  stretches  towards  the 
west,  and  on  it  is  the  pen  from  which  the  cattle  are  issued. 
The  tepees  and  camp-fires  sprang  up  overnight,  and  when 
we  came  out  the  next  morning  the  prairie  was  crowded 
with  them,  and  more  Indians  were  driving  in  every  minute, 
with  the  family  in  the  wagon  and  the  dogs  under  it,  as  the 
country  people  in  the  East  flock  into  town  for  the  circus. 
The  men  galloped  off  to  the  cattle-pen,  and  the  women 
gathered  in  a  long  line  in  front  of  the  agent's  store  to  wait 
their  turn  for  the  rations.  It  was  a  curious  line,  with  very 
young  girls  in  it,  very  proud  of  the  little  babies  in  beaded 
knapsacks  on  their  backs — dirty,  bright -eyed  babies  that 
looked  like  mummies  suddenly  come  to  life  again  at  the 
period  of  their  first  childhood^ — and  wrinkled,  bent  old 
squaws,  even  more  like  mummies,  with  coarse  white  hair, 
and  hands  worn  almost  out  of  shape  with  work.  Each  of 
these  had  a  tag,  such  as  those  that  the  express  companies 
use,  on  which  was  printed  the  number  in  each  family,  and 
the  amount  of  grain,  flour,  baking-powder,  and  soap  to  which 
the  family  was  entitled.  They  passed  in  at  one  door  and  in 
front  of  a  long  counter,  and  out  at  another.  They  crowded 
and  pushed  a  great  deal,  almost  as  much  as  their  fairer 
sisters  do  in  front  of  the  box-office  at  a  Patti  matinee,  and 
the  babies  blinked  stoically  at  the  sun,  and  seemed  to  wish 
they  could  get  their  arms  out  of  the  wrappings  and  rub 
away  the  tears.  A  man  in  a  sombrero  would  look  at  the 
tag  and  call  out,  "  One  of  flour,  two  of  sugar,  one  soap,  and 
one  baking-powder,"  and  his  Indian  assistants  delved  into 
the  barrels  behind  the  line  of  the  counter,  and  emptied  the 
rations  into  the  squaw's  open  apron.  She  sorted  them  when 
she  reached  the  outside.  By  ten  o'clock  the  distribution 
was  over,  and  the  women  followed  the  men  to  the  cattle- 

i  161 


The  West  from  a  Car  -  Window 

pen  on  the  prairie.  There  were  not  over  three  hundred 
Indians  there,  although  they  represented  several  thousand 
others,  who  remained  in  the  different  camps  scattered  over 
the  reservation,  wherever  water  and  timber,  and  bluffs  to 
shield  them  best  from  the  wind,  were  to  be  found  in  com- 
mon. Each  steer  is  calculated  to  supply  twenty-five  Indians 
with  beef  for  two  weeks,  or  from  one  and  a  half  to  two 
pounds  of  beef  a  day;  this  is  on  the  supposition  that  the 
steers  average  from  one  thousand  to  one  thousand  and  two 
hundred  pounds.  The  steers  that  I  saw  issued  weighed 
about  five  hundred  pounds,  and  when  they  tried  to  run, 
stumbled  with  the  weakness  of  starvation.  They  were  noth- 
ing but  hide  and  ribs  and  two  horns.  They  were  driven 
four  at  a  time  through  a  long  chute,  and  halted  at  the  gate 
•  at  the  end  of  it  until  their  owner's  names  were  marked  off 
the  list.  The  Indians  were  gathered  in  front  of  the  gate  in 
long  rows,  or  in  groups  of  ten  or  twelve,  sitting  easily  in 
their  saddles,  and  riding  off  leisurely  in  bunches  of  four  as 
their  names  were  called  out,  and  as  their  cattle  were  started 
off  with  a  parting  kick  into  the  open  prairie. 

The  Apaches,  Comanches,  Delawares,  and  Towacomies 
drove  their  share  off  towards  their  camps ;  the  Caddoes 
and  the  Kiowas,  who  live  near  the  agency,  and  who  were 
served  last,  killed  theirs,  if  they  chose  to  do  so,  as  soon  as 
they  left  the  pen.  A  man  in  charge  of  the  issue  held  a 
long  paper  in  his  hand,  and  called  out,  "  Eck-hoos-cho, 
Pe-an-voon-it,  Hoos-cho,  and  Cho-noo-chy,"  which  meant 
that  Red-Bird,  Large -Looking -Glass,  The  Bird,  and  Deer- 
Head  were  to  have  the  next  four  steers.  His  assistant,  an 
Indian  policeman,  with  "  God  helps  them  who  help  them- 
selves" engraved  on  his  brass  buttons,  with  the  figure  of 
an  Indian  toiling  at  a  plough  in  the  centre,  repeated  these 

182 


On  an  Indian  Reservation 

names  aloud,  and  designated  which  steer  was  to  go  to  which 
Indian. 

A  beef  issue  is  not  a  pretty  thing  to  watch.  Why  the 
Government  does  not  serve  its  meat  with  the  throats  cut, 
as  any  reputable  butcher  would  do,  it  is  not  possible  to 
determine.  It  seems  to  prefer,  on  the  contrary,  that  the 
Indian  should  exhibit  his  disregard  for  the  suffering  of 
animals  and  his  bad  marksmanship  at  the  same  time. 
When  the  representatives  of  the  more  distant  tribes  had 
ridden  off,  chasing  their  beef  before  them,  the  Caddoes 
and  Kiowas  gathered  close  around  the  gate  of  the  pen, 
with  the  boys  in  front.  They  were  handsome,  mischievous 
boys,  with  leather  leggings,  colored  green  and  blue  and  with 
silver  buttons  down  the  side,  and  beaded  buckskin  shirts. 
They  sat  two  on  each  pony,  and  each  held  his  bow  and 
arrows,  and  as  the  steers  came  stumbling  blindly  out  into 
the  open,  they  let  the  arrows  drive  from  a  distance  of 
ten  feet  into  the  animal's  flank  and  neck,  where  they  stuck 
quivering.  Then  the  Indian  boys  would  yell,  and  their 
fathers,  who  had  hunted  buffaloes  with  arrows,  smiled  ap- 
provingly. The  arrows  were  not  big  enough  to  kill,  they 
merely  hurt,  and  the  steer  would  rush  off  into  a  clumsy 
gallop  for  fifty  yards,  when  its  owner  would  raise  his  Win- 
chester, and  make  the  dust  spurt  up  around,  it  until  one 
bullet  would  reach  a  leg,  and  the  steer  would  stop  for  an 
instant,  with  a  desperate  toss  of  its  head,  and  stagger  for- 
ward again  on  three.  The  dogs  to  the  number  of  twenty 
or  more  were  around  it  by  this  time  in  a  snarling,  leaping 
pack,  and  the  owner  would  try  again,  and  wound  it  perhaps 
in  the  flank,  and  it  would  lurch  over  heavily  like  a  drunken 
man,  shaking  its  head  from  side  to  side  and  tossing  its 
horns  at  the  dogs,  who  bit  at  the  place  where  the  blood 

165 


The  West  from  a  Car  -  Window 

ran,  and  snapped  at  its  legs.  Sometimes  it  would  lie  there 
for  an  hour,  until  it  bled  to  death,  or,  again,  it  would 
scramble  to  its  feet,  and  the  dogs  would  start  off  in  a  panic 
of  fear  after  a  more  helpless  victim. 

The  field  grew  thick  with  these  miniature  butcheries,  the 
Winchesters  cracking,  and  the  spurts  of  smoke  rising  and 
drifting  away,  the  dogs  yelping,  and  the  Indians  wheeling 
in  quick  circles  around  the  steer,  shooting  as  they  rode, 
and  hitting  the  mark  once  in  every  half-dozen  shots.  It 
was  the  most  unsportsmanlike  and  wantonly  cruel  exhibi- 
tion I  have  ever  seen.  A  bull  in  a  ring  has  a  fighting 
chance  and  takes  it,  but  these  animals,  who  were  too  weak 
to  stand,  and  too  frightened  to  run,  staggered  about  until 
the  Indians  had  finished  torturing  them,  and  then,  with 
eyes  rolling  and  blood  spurting  from  their  mouths,  would 
pitch  forward  and  die.  And  they  had  to  be  quick  about 
it,  before  the  squaws  began  cutting  off  the  hide  while  the 
flanks  were  still  heaving. 

This  is  the  view  of  a  beef  issue  which  the  friend  of  the 
Indian  does  not  like  to  take.  He  prefers  calling  your  at- 
tention to  the  condition  of  the  cattle  served  the  Indian,  and 
in  showing  how  outrageously  he  is  treated  in  this  respect. 
The  Government  either  purchases  steers  for  the  Indians  a 
few  weeks  before  an  issue,  or  three  or  four  months  previous 
to  it,  feeding  them  meanwhile  on  the  Government  reserva- 
tion. The  latter  practice  is  much  more  satisfactory  to  the 
contractor,  as  it  saves  him  the  cost  and  care  of  these  cattle 
during  the  winter,  and  the  inevitable  loss  which  must  ensue 
in  that  time  through  illness  and  starvation.  Those  I  saw 
had  been  purchased  in  October,  and  had  been  weighed  and 
branded  at  that  time  with  the  Government  brand.  They 
were  then  allowed  to  roam  over  the  Government  reservation 

166 


On  an  Indian  Reservation 

until  the  spring,  when  they  had  fallen  off  in  weight  from 
one-half  to  one-third.  They  were  then  issued  at  their  orig- 
inal weight.  That  is,  a  steer  which  in  October  was  found 
to  weigh  eleven  hundred  pounds,  and  which  would  supply 
twenty  or  more  people  with  meat,  was  supposed  to  have 
kept  this  weight  throughout  the  entire  winter,  and  was 
issued  at  eleven  hundred  although  it  had  not  three  hun- 
dred pounds  of  flesh  on  its  bones.  The  agent  is  not  to 
blame  for  this.  This  is  the  fault  of  the  Government,  and 
it  is  quite  fair  to  suppose  that  some  one  besides  the  con- 
tractor benefits  by  the  arrangement.  When  the  beef  is 
issued  two  weeks  after  the  contract  has  been  made,  it  can 
and  frequently  is  rejected  by  the  army  officer  in  charge  of 
the  issue  if  he  thinks  it  is  unfit.  But  the  officers  present  at 
the  issue  that  I  saw  were  as  helpless  as  they  were  indignant, 
for  the  beef  had  weighed  the  weight  credited  to  it  once 
when  it  was  paid  for,  and  the  contractor  had  saved  the  ex- 
pense of  keeping  it,  and  the  Indian  received  just  one-fourth 
of  the  meat  due  him,  and  for  which  he  had  paid  in  land. 

Fort  Sill,  which  is  a  day's  journey  in  a  stage  from  Ana- 
darko,  is  an  eight-company  post  situated  on  the  table-land 
of  a  hill,  with  other  hills  around  it,  and  is,  though  some- 
what inaccessible,  as  interesting  and  beautiful  a  spot  to 
visit  as  many  others  which  we  cross  the  ocean  to  see.  I 
will  be  able  to  tell  why  this  is  so  when  I  write  something 
later  about  the  army  posts.  There  are  any  number  of 
Indians  here,  and  they  add  to  the  post  a  delightfully  pictu- 
resque and  foreign  element.  L  Troop  of  the  Seventh  cav- 
airy,  which  is  an  Indian  troop,  is  the  nucleus  around  which 
the  other  Indians  gather.  The  troop  is  encamped  at  the  foot 
of  the  hill  on  which  the  post  stands.  It  shows  the  Indian 
civilized  by  uniform,  and  his  Indian  brother  uncivilized  in 

161 


The  West  from  a  Car  -  Window 

his  blanket  and  war-paint ;  and  although  I  should  not  like 
to  hurt  the  feelings  of  the  patient,  enthusiastic  officers  who 
have  enlisted  the  Indians  for  these  different  troops  for 
which  the  Government  calls,  I  think  the  blanket  Indian  is  a 
much  more  warlike-looking  and  interesting  individual.  But 
you  mustn't  say  so,  as  George  the  Third  advised.  The 
soldier  Indians  live  in  regulation  tents  staked  out  in  rows, 
and  with  the  ground  around  so  cleanly  kept  that  one  could 
play  tennis  on  it,  and  immediately  back  of  these  are  the 
conical  tepees  of  their  wives,  brothers,  and  grandmothers ; 
and  what  Lieutenant  Scott  is  going  to  do  with  all  these 
pretty  young  squaws  and  beautiful  children  and  withered 
old  witches,  and  their  two  or  three  hundred  wolf-dogs,  when 
he  marches  forth  to  war  with  his  Indian  troop,  is  one  of 
the  questions  his  brother  officers  find  much  entertainment 
in  asking. 

The  Indian  children  around  this  encampment  were  the 
brightest  spot  in  my  entire  Western  trip.  They  are  the 
prettiest  and  most  beautifully  barbaric  little  children  I  have 
ever  seen.  They  grow  out  of  it  very  soon,  but  that  is  no 
reason  why  one  should  not  make  the  most  of  it  while  it 
lasts.  And  they  are  as  wild  and  fearful  of  the  white  visi- 
tor, unless  he  happens  to  be  Lieutenant  Scott  or  Second 
Lieutenant  Quay,  as  the  antelope  in  the  prairie  around  him. 
It  required  a  corporal's  guard,  two  lieutenants,  and  three 
squaws  to  persuade  one  of  them  to  stand  still  and  be  photo" 
graphed,  and  whenever  my  camera  and  I  appeared  together 
there  was  a  wild  stampede  of  Indian  children,  which  no  num- 
ber of  looking-glasses  or  dimes  or  strings  of  beads  could 
allay.  Not  that  they  would  not  take  the  bribes,  but  they 
would  run  as  soon  as  they  had  snatched  them.  It  was  very 
distressing,  for  I  did  not  mean  to  hurt  them  very  much. 

168 


INDIAN    BOY    AND    PINTO   PONY 


On  an  Indian  Reservation 

The  older  people  were  kinder,  and  would  let  me  sit  inside 
the  tepees,  which  were  very  warm  on  the  coldest  days,  and 
watch  them  cook,  and  play  their  queer  games,  and  work 
moccasins,  and  gamble  at  monte  for  brass  rings  if  they  were 
women,  or  for  cartridges  if  they  were  men.  And  for  ways 
that  are  dark  and  tricks  that  are  vain,  I  think  the  Indian 
monte-dealer  can  instruct  a  Chinese  poker-player  in  many 
things.  What  was  so  fine  about  them  was  their  dignity, 
hospitality,  and  strict  suppression  of  all  curiosity.  They 
always  received  a  present  as  though  they  were  doing  you  a 
favor,  and  you  felt  that  you  were  paying  tribute.  This 
makes  them  difficult  to  deal  with  as  soldiers.  They  cannot 
be  treated  as  white  men,  and  put  in  the  guard -house  for 
every  slight  offence.  Lieutenant  Scott  has  to  explain 
things  to  them,  and  praise  them,  and  excite  a  spirit  of 
emulation  among  them  by  commending  those  publicly  who 
have  done  well.  For  instance,  they  hate  to  lose  their  long 
hair,  and  Lieutenant  Scott  did  not  order  them  to  have  it 
cut,  but  told  them  it  would  please  him  if  they  did ;  and  so 
one  by  one,  and  in  bunches  of  three  and  four,  they  tramped 
up  the  hill  to  the  post  barber,  and  back  again  with  their 
locks  in  their  hands,  to  barter  them  for  tobacco  with  the 
post  trader.  The  Indians  at  Fort  Sill  were  a  temperate 
lot,  and  Lieutenant  Harris,  who  has  charge  of  the  can- 
teen, growled  because  they  did  not  drink  enough  to  pay 
for  their  share  of  the  dividend  which  is  returned  to  each 
troop  at  the  end  of  the  month. 

Lieutenant  Scott  obtained  his  ascendency  over  his  troop 
in  several  ways  —  first,  by  climbing  a  face  of  rock,  and, 
with  the  assistance  of  Lieutenant  Quay,  taking  an  eagle 
from  the  nest  it  had  built  there.  Every  Indian  in  the  reser- 
vation knew  of  that  nest,  and  had  long  wanted  the  eagle's 

171 


The  West  from  a  Car  -  Window 

feathers  for  a  war-bonnet,  but  none  of  them  had  ever  dared 
to  climb  the  mirrorlike  surface  of  the  cliff,  with  the  rocks 
below.  The  fame  of  this  exploit  spread,  by  what  means  it 
is  hard  to  understand  among  people  who  have  no  news- 
papers or  letters,  but  at  beef  issues,  perhaps,  or  Messiah 
dances,  or  casual  meetings  on  the  prairie,  which  help  to 
build  up  reputations  and  make  the  prowess  of  one  chief 
known  to  those  of  all  the  other  tribes,  or  the  beauty  of  an 
Indian  girl  familiar.  Then,  following  this  exploit,  three 
little  Indian  children  ran  away  from  school  because  they 
had  been  flogged,  and  tried  to  reach  their  father's  tent 
fifteen  miles  off  on  the  reservation,  and  were  found  half- 
buried  in  the  snow  and  frozen  to  death.  One  of  them  was 
without  his  heavier  garments,  which  he  had  wrapped  around 
his  younger  brother.  The  terrified  school-teacher  sent  a 
message  to  the  fort  begging  for  two  troops  of  cavalry  to 
protect  him  from  the  wrath  of  the  older  Indians,  and  the 
post  commander  sent  out  Lieutenant  Scott  alone  to  treat 
with  them.  His  words  were  much  more  effective  than  two 
troops  of  cavalry  would  have  been,  and  the  threatened  out- 
break was  stopped.  The  school-master  fled  to  the  woods, 
and  never  came  back.  What  the  Indians  saw  of  Lieuten- 
ant Scott  at  this  crisis  made  them  trust  him  for  the  future, 
and  this  and  the  robbery  of  the  eagle's  nest  explain  partly, 
as  do  his  gentleness  and  consideration,  the  remarkable  hold 
he  has  over  them.  Some  one  was  trying  to  tell  one  of  the 
chiefs  how  the  white  man  could  bring  lightning  down  from 
the  sky,  and  make  it  talk  for  him  from  one  end  of  the 
country  to  the  other. 

"  Oh  yes,"  the  Indian  said,  simply,  "  that  is  quite  true. 
Lieutenant  Scott  says  so." 

But  what  has  chiefly  contributed  to  make  the  lieuten- 

172 


On  an  Indian  Reservation 

ant's  work  easy  for  him  is  his  knowledge  of  the  sign  lan- 
gQEge,  with  which  the  different  tribes,  though  speaking 
different  languages,  can  communicate  one  with  the  other. 
He  is  said  to  speak  this  more  correctly  and  fluently  than 
any  other  officer  in  the  army,  and  perhaps  any  other  white 
man.  It  is  a  very  curious  language.  It  is  not  at  all  like 
the  deaf-and-dumb  alphabet,  which  is  an  alphabet,  and  is 
not  pretty  to  watch.  It  is  just  what  its  name  implies — a 
language  of  signs.  The  first  time  I  saw  the  lieutenant 
speaking  it,  I  confess  I  thought,  having  heard  of  his  skill 
at  Fort  Reno,  that  he  was  only  doing  it  because  he  could 
do  it,  as  young  men  who  speak  French  prefer  to  order  their 
American  dinners  in  that  language  when  the  waiter  can 
understand  English  quite  as  well  as  themselves.  I  regarded 
it  as  a  pleasing  weakness,  and  was  quite  sure  that  the  lieu- 
tenant was  going  to  meet  the  Indian  back  of  the  canteen 
and  say  it  over  again  in  plain  every-day  words.  In  this  I 
wronged  him ;  but  it  was  not  until  I  had  watched  his  Irish 
sergeant  converse  in  this  silent  language  for  two  long  hours 
with  half  a  dozen  Indians  of  different  tribes,  and  had  seen 
them  all  laugh  heartily  at  his  witticisms  delivered  in  sema- 
phoric  gestures,  that  I  really  believed  in  it.  It  seems  that 
what  the  lieutenant  said  was,  "Tell  the  first  sergeant  that  I 
wish  to  see  the  soldiers  drill  at  one  o'clock,  and,  after  that, 
go  to  the  store  and  ask  Madeira  if  there  is  to  be  a  beef 
issue  to-day."  It  is  very  difficult  to  describe  in  writing 
how  he  did  this;  and  as  it  is  a  really  pretty  thing  to  watch, 
it  seems  a  pity  to  spoil  it.  As  well  as  I  remember  it,  he 
did  something  like  this.  He  first  drew  his  hand  over  his 
sleeve  to  mark  the  sergeant's  stripes;  then  he  held  his 
fingers  upright  in  front  of  him,  and  moved  them  forward 
to  signify  soldiers ;  by  holding  them  in  still  another  posi* 

178 


The  West  from  a  Car  -  Window 

tion,  he  represented  soldiers  drilling ;  then  he  made  a  spy- 
glass out  of  his  thumb  and  first  finger,  and  looked  up 
through  it  at  the  sky  —  this  represented  the  sun  at  one 
o'clock.  "After  that"  was  a  quick  cut  in  the  air;  the 
"  store"  was  an  interlacing  of  the  fingers,  to  signify  a  place 
where  one  thing  met  or  was  exchanged  for  another ;  "  Ma- 
deira" he  named ;  beef  was  a  turning  up  of  the  fingers,  to  rep- 
resent horns;  and  how  he  represented  issue  I  have  no  idea. 
It  is  a  most  curious  thing  to  watch,  for  they  change  from 
one  sign  to  the  other  with  the  greatest  rapidity.  I  always 
regarded  it  with  great  interest  as  a  sort  of  game,  and  tried 
to  guess  what  the  different  gestures  might  mean.  Some  of 
the  signs  are  very  old,  and  their  origin  is  as  much  in  dis- 
pute as  some  of  the  lines  in  the  first  folios  of  Shakespeare, 
and  have  nearly  as  many  commentators.  Ail  the  Indians 
know  these  signs,  but  very  few  of  them  can  tell  how  they 
came  to  mean  what  they  do.  "  To  go  to  war,"  for  instance, 
is  shown  by  sweeping  the  right  arm  out  with  the  thumb 
and  first  finger  at  right  angles ;  this  comes  from  an  early 
custom  among  the  Indians  of  carrying  a  lighted  pipe  before 
them  when  going  on  the  war-path.  The  thumb  and  finger 
in  that  position  are  supposed  to  represent  the  angle  of  the 
bowl  of  the  pipe  and  the  stem. 

I  visited  a  few  of  the  Indian  schools  when  I  was  in  the 
Territory,  and  found  the  pupils  quite  learned.  The  teachers 
are  not  permitted  to  study  the  Indian  languages,  and  their 
charges  in  consequence  hear  nothing  but  English,  and  so 
pick  it  up  the  more  quickly.  The  young  women  who  teach 
them  seem  to  labor  under  certain  disadvantages;  one  of 
them  was  reading  the  English  lesson  from  a  United  States 
history  intended  for  much  older  children — ^grown-up  chil- 
dren, in  fact — and  explained  that  she  had  to  order  and 

174 


wm^^'^: 


\. 


•'    ''mr 

^^mjk 

J 

^ 

!!■*>-- 

4 

A  KIOWA 

VAIOKN 

On  an  Indian  Reservation 

select  the  school-books  she  used  from  a  list  furnished  by 
the  Government,  and  could  form  no  opinion  of  its  appropri- 
ateness until  it  arrived. 

Some  of  the  Indian  parents  are  very  proud  of  their  chil- 
dren's progress,  and  on  beef- issue  days  visit  the  schools, 
and  listen  with  great  satisfaction  to  their  children  speaking 
in  the  unknown  tongue.  There  were  several  in  one  of  the 
school-rooms  while  I  was  there,  and  the  teacher  turned  them 
out  of  their  chairs  to  make  room  for  us,  remarking  pleas- 
antly  that  the  Indians  were  accustomed  to  sitting  around 
on  the  ground.  She  afterwards  added  to  this  by  telling  us 
that  there  was  no  sentiment  in  her,  and  that  she  taught 
Indians  for  the  fifty  dollars  there  was  in  it.  The  mother  of 
one  of  the  little  boys  was  already  crouching  on  the  floor  as 
we  came  in,  or  squatting  on  her  heels,  as  they  seem  to  be 
able  to  do  without  fatigue  for  any  length  of  time.  During 
the  half -hour  we  were  there,  she  never  changed  her  position 
or  turned  her  head  to  look  at  us,  but  kept  her  eyes  fixed 
only  on  her  son  sitting  on  the  bench  above  her.  He  was  a 
very  plump,  clean,  and  excited  little  Indian,  with  his  hair 
cut  short,  and  dressed  in  a  very  fine  pair  of  trousers  and 
jacket,  and  with  shoes  and  stockings.  He  was  very  keen 
to  show  the  white  visitors  how  well  he  knew  their  talk,  and 
read  his  book  with  a  masterful  shaking  of  the  head,  as 
though  it  had  no  terrors  for  him.  His  mother,  kneeling  at 
his  side  on  the  floor,  wore  a  single  garment,  and  over  that  a 
dirty  blanket  strapped  around  her  waist  with  a  beaded  belt. 
Her  feet  were  bare,  and  her  coarse  hair  hung  down  over 
her  face  and  down  her  back  almost  to  her  waist  in  an  un- 
kempt mass.  She  supported  her  chin  on  one  hand,  and 
with  the  other  hand,  black  and  wrinkled,  and  with  nails 
broken  by  cutting  wood  and  harnessing  horses  and  plough- 

M  17T 


The  West  from  a  Car  -  Window 

ing  in  the  fields,  brushed  her  hair  back  from  before  her 
eyes,  and  then  touched  her  son's  arm  wistfully,  as  a  dog 
tries  to  draw  his  master's  eyes,  and  as  though  he  were 
something  fragile  and  fine.  But  he  paid  no  attention  to 
her  whatsoever ;  he  was  very  much  interested  in  the  lesson. 
She  was  the  only  thing  I  saw  in  the  school-room.  I  won- 
dered if  she  was  thinking  of  the  days  when  she  carried 
his  weight  on  her  back  as  she  went  about  her  cooking  or 
foraging  for  wood,  or  swung  him  from  a  limb  of  a  tree, 
and  of  the  first  leather  leggings  she  made  for  him  when  he 
was  able  to  walk,  and  of  the  necklace  of  elk  teeth,  and  the 
arrows  which  he  used  to  fire  bravely  at  the  prairie-dogs. 
He  was  a  very  different  child  now,  and  very  far  away 
from  the  doglike  figure  crouching  by  his  side  and  gazing 
up  patiently  into  his  face,  as  if  looking  for  something  she 
had  lost. 

It  is  quite  too  presumptuous  to  suggest  any  opinion  on 
the  Indian  question  when  one  has  only  lived  with  them  for 
three  weeks,  but  the  experience  of  others  who  have  lived 
with  them  for  thirty  years  is  worth  repeating.  You  will 
find  that  the  individual  point  of  view  regarding  the  Indian 
is  much  biassed  by  the  individual  interests.  A  man  told  me 
that  in  his  eyes  no  one  under  heaven  was  better  than  a 
white  man,  and  if  the  white  man  had  to  work  for  his  living, 
he  could  not  see  why  the  Indian  should  not  work  for  his. 
I  asked  him  if  he  thought  of  taking  up  Indian  land  in  the 
Territory  when  it  was  open  in  the  spring,  and  he  said  that 
was  his  intention,  "  and  why  ?" 

The  officers  are  the  only  men  who  have  absolutely  noth- 
ing to  gain,  make,  or  lose  by  the  Indians,  and  their  point  of 
view  is  accordingly  the  fairest,  and  they  themselves  say  it 
would  be  a  mistake  to  follow  the  plan  now  under  consid- 

178 


On  an  Indian  Reservation 

eration — of  placing  officers  in  charge  of  the  agencies.  This 
would  at  once  strip  them  of  their  present  neutral  position, 
and,  as  well,  open  to  them  the  temptation  which  the  control 
of  many  thousands  of  dollars'  worth  of  property  entails 
where  the  recipients  of  this  property  are  as  helpless  and 
ignorant  as  children.  They  rather  favor  raising  the  salary 
of  the  Indian  agent  from  two  thousand  to  ten  thousand  dol- 
lars, and  by  so  doing  bring  men  of  intelligence  and  probity 
into  the  service,  and  destroy  at  the  same  time  the  temptation 
to  "  make  something  "  out  of  the  office.  It  may  have  been 
merely  an  accident,  but  I  did  not  meet  with  one  officer  in 
any  of  the  army  posts  who  did  not  side  with  the  Indian  in 
his  battle  for  his  rights  with  the  Government.  As  for  the 
agents,  as  the  people  say  in  the  West,  "  they  are  not  here 
for  their  health."  The  Indian  agents  of  the  present  day 
are,  as  every  one  knows,  political  appointments,  and  many 
of  them — not  all — are  men  who  at  home  would  keep  their 
corner  grocery  or  liquor  store,  and  who  would  flatter  and 
be  civil  to  every  woman  in  the  neighboring  tenement  who 
came  for  a  pound  of  sugar  or  a  pitcher  of  beer.  These 
men  are  suddenly  placed  in  the  control  of  hundreds  of  sen- 
sitive, dangerous,  semi -civilized  people,  whom  they  are  as 
capable  of  understanding  as  a  Bowery  boy  would  be  of 
appreciating  an  Arab  of  the  desert. 

The  agents  are  not  the  only  people  who  make  mistakes. 
Some  friend  mailed  me  a  book  the  other  day  on  Indian 
reservations,  in  order  that  I  might  avoid  writing  what  has 
already  been  written.  I  read  only  one  page  of  the  book, 
in  which  the  author  described  his  manner  of  visiting  the 
Indian  encampments.  He  would  drive  to  one  of  these  in 
his  ambulance,  and  upon  being  informed  that  the  chiefs 
were  waiting  to  receive  him  in  their  tents,  would  bid  them 

179 


The  West  from  a  Car  -  Window 

meet  him  at  the  next  camp,  to  which  he  would  drive  rapid- 
ly, and  there  make  the  same  proposition.  He  would  then 
stop  his  wagon  three  miles  away  on  the  prairie,  and  wait 
for  the  chiefs  to  follow  him  to  that  point.  What  his  ob- 
ject was  in  this  exhibition,  with  which  he  seemed  very  well 
satisfied,  he  only  knows.  Whether  it  was  to  teach  the 
chiefs  they  were  not  masters  in  their  own  camps,  or  that  he 
was  a  most  superior  person,  I  could  not  make  out ;  but  he 
might  just  as  effectively  have  visited  Washington,  and  sent 
the  President  word  he  could  not  visit  him  at  the  White 
House,  but  that  he  would  grant  him  an  interview  at  his 
hotel.  I  wonder  just  how  near  this  superior  young  man 
got  to  the  Indians,  and  just  how  wide  they  opened  their 
hearts  to  him. 

There  was  an  Indian  agent  once  —  it  was  not  long  ago, 
but  there  is  no  need  to  give  dates  or  names,  for  the  man  is 
dead — who  when  the  Indians  asked  him  to  paint  the  wag- 
ons (with  which  the  Government  furnished  them  through 
him  in  return  for  their  land)  red  instead  of  green,  answered 
that  he  would  not  pander  to  their  absurdly  barbaric  tastes. 
Only  he  did  not  say  absurdly.  He  was  a  man  who  had  his 
own  ideas  about  things,  and  who  was  not  to  be  fooled,  and 
he  was  also  a  superior  person,  who  preferred  to  trample  on 
rather  than  to  understand  the  peculiarities  of  his  wards. 
So  one  morning  this  agent  and  his  wife  and  children  were 
found  hacked  to  pieces  by  these  wards  with  barbaric  tastes, 
and  the  soldiers  were  called  out,  and  shot  many  of  the 
Indians;  and  many  white  women  back  of  the  barracks, 
and  on  the  line  itself,  are  now  wearing  mourning,  and 
several  officers  got  their  first  bar.  It  would  seem  from 
this  very  recent  incident,  as  well  as  from  many  others 
of  which  one  hears,  that  it  would  be  cheaper  in  the  end 

180 


On  an  Indian  Reservation 

to  place  agents  over  the  Indians  with  sufficient  intelli- 
gence to  know  just  when  to  be  firm,  and  when  to  com- 
promise in  a  matter ;  for  instance,  that  of  painting  a  wag- 
on red. 


YII 
A  CIVILIAN  AT  AN  ARMY  POST 


A  Civilian  at  an  Army  Post 


VII 

A    CIVILIAN    AT    AN    ARMY    POST 

I  HE  army  posts  of  the  United  States  are  as  (lif- 
erent one  from  another  as  the  stations  along 
the  line  of  a  great  railroad  system.  There  is 
the  same  organization  for  all,  and  the  highest 
officers  govern  one  as  well  as  the  other ;  but  in  appearance 
and  degree  of  usefulness  and  local  rule  they  are  as  inde- 
pendent and  yet  as  dependent,  and  as  far  apart  in  actual 
miles,  as  the  Grand  Central  Depot  in  New  York,  with 
its  twenty  tracks  and  as  many  ticket- windows  and  oak- 
bound  offices  and  greatest  after-dinner  orator,  is  distant 
from  the  section -house  at  the  unfinished  end  of  a  road 
somewhere  on  the  prairie.  The  commanding  officer's  quar- 
ters alone  at  Fort  Sheridan  cost  thirty  thousand  dollars, 
and  more  than  a  million  and  a  half  has  been  spent  on  Fort 
Riley ;  but  there  are  many  other  posts  where  nature  sup- 
plied the  mud  and  logs  for  the  whole  station,  and  the  cost 
to  the  Government  could  not  have  been  more  than  three 
hundred  dollars  at  the  most.  It  is  consequently  difficult 
to  write  in  a  general  way  of  army  posts.  What  is  true  of 
one  is  by  no  means  true  of  another,  and  it  will  be  better, 
perhaps,  to  first  tell  of  those  army  posts  which  possess 
many  features  in  common  —  eight -company  posts,  for  in- 
stance, which   are   not  too  large   nor  too   small,  not   too 

185 


The  West  from  a  Car  -  Window 

near  civilization,  and  yet  not  too  far  removed  from  the  rail- 
road. An  eight  -  company  post  is  a  little  town  or  com- 
munity of  about  three  hundred  people  living  in  a  quad- 
rangle around  a  parade-ground.  The  scenery  surrounding 
the  quadrangle  may  differ  as  widely  as  you  please  to  im- 
agine it ;  it  may  be  mountainous  and  beautiful,  or  level, 
flat,  and  unprofitable,  but  the  parade-ground  is  always  the 
same.  It  has  a  flag-pole  at  the  entrance  to  the  quadrangle, 
and  a  base-ball  diamond  marked  out  on  the  side  on  which 
the  men  live,  and  tennis-courts  towards  the  officers'  quar- 
ters. When  you  speak  of  the  side  of  the  square  where  the 
enlisted  men  live,  you  say  "  barracks,"  and  you  refer  to  the 
oflficers'  share  of  the  quadrangle  as  "  the  line."  In  England 
you  can  safely  say  that  an  officer  is  living  in  barracks,  but 
you  must  not  say  this  cc  a  United  States  officer;  he  lives 
in  the  third  or  fourth  house  up  or  down  "  the  line." 

The  barracks  are  a  long  continuous  row  of  single-story 
buildings  with  covered  porches  facing  the  parade.  They 
are  generally  painted  an  uncompromising  brown,  and  are 
much  more  beautiful  inside  than  out,  especially  the  mess- 
rooms,  where  all  the  wood-work  has  been  scrubbed  so  hard 
that  the  tables  are  worn  almost  to  a  concave  surface.  The 
architectural  appearance  of  the  officers'  quarters  on  the  line 
differs  in  different  posts  ;  but  each  house  of  each  individual 
post,  whether  it  is  a  double  or  single  house,  is  alike  to  the 
number  of  bricks  in  the  walls  and  in  the  exact  arrangement 
of  the  rooms.  The  wives  of  the  officers  may  change  the 
outer  appearance  of  their  homes  by  planting  rose-bushes 
and  ivy  about  the  yards,  but  whenever  they  do,  some  other 
officer's  wife  is  immediately  transferred  from  another  post 
and  "  outranks  "  them,  and  they  have  to  move  farther  down 
the  line,  and  watch  the  new-comer  plucking  their  roses,  and 


A  Civilian  at  an  Army  Post 

reaping  the  harvest  she  has  not  sown.  This  rule  also  ap- 
plies to  new  wall-paper,  and  the  introduction  at  your  own 
expense  of  open  fireplaces,  with  blue  and  white  tiles 
which  will  not  come  off  or  out  when  the  new-comer  moves 
in.  In  addition  to  the  officers'  quarters  and  the  barracks, 
there  is  an  administration  building,  which  is  the  executive 
mansion  of  this  little  community,  a  quartermaster's  store- 
house, a  guard-house,  and  the  hospital.  The  stables  are 
back  of  the  barracks,  out  of  sight  of  those  who  live  facing 
the  parade,  and  there  is  generally  a  rear-guard  of  little  huts 
and  houses  occupied  by  sergeants'  wives,  who  do  the  wash- 
ing for  the  posts,  and  do  it  very  well.  This  is,  briefly,  the 
actual  appearance  of  an  army  post — a  quadrangle  of  houses, 
continuous  and  one-story  high  on  two  sides,  and  separate 
and  two  stories  high  on  the  other  two  sides,  facing  the 
parade,  and  occasionally  surrounded  by  beautiful  country. 

The  life  of  an  array  post,  its  internal  arrangements,  its 
necessary  routine,  and  its  expedients  for  breaking  this  rou- 
tine pleasantly,  cannot  be  dealt  with  so  briefly ;  it  is  a  deli- 
cate and  extensive  subject.  It  is  impossible  to  separate  the 
official  and  social  life  of  an  army  post.  The  commanding 
oflScer  does  not  lose  that  dignity  which  doth  hedge  him  in 
when  he  and  his  orderly  move  from  the  administration 
building  to  his  quarters,  and  it  would  obviously  confuse 
matters  if  a  second  lieutenant  bet  him  in  the  morning  he 
could  not  put  the  red  ball  into  the  right-corner  pocket,  and 
in  the  evening  at  dress  parade  he  should  order  the  same 
lieutenant  and  his  company  into  the  lower  right-hand 
corner  of  the  parade  at  double-quick.  This  would  tend  to 
destroy  discipline.  And  so,  as  far  as  the  men  of  the  post 
are  concerned,  the  oflBcial  and  social  life  touch  at  many 
points.    With  the  women,  of  course,  it  is  different,  although 

189 


The  West  from  a  Car  -  Window 

there  was  a  colonel's  wife  not  long  ago  who  said  to  the 
officers'  wives  assisting  her  to  receive  at  a  dance,  "  You  will 
take  your  places,  ladies,  in  order  of  rank."  T  repeat  this 
mild  piece  of  gossip  because  it  was  the  only  piece  of  gossip 
1  heard  at  any  army  post,  which  is  interesting  when  one 
remembers  the  reputation  given  the  army  posts  by  one  of 
their  own  people  for  that  sort  of  thing. 

The  official  head  of  the  post  is  the  commanding  officer. 
He  has  under  him  eight  "  companies,"  if  they  are  infantry, 
or  "  troops  "  if  they  are  cavalry,  each  commanded  in  turn 
by  a  captain,  who  has  under  him  a  first  and  second  lieuten- 
ant, who  rule  in  their  turn  numerous  sergeants  and  cor- 
porals. There  is  also  a  major  or  two,  two  or  three  surgeons, 
who  rank  with  the  captains,  and  a  quartermaster  and  an 
adjutant,  who  are  selected  from  among  the  captains  or 
lieutenants  of  the  post,  and  who  perform,  in  consequence, 
double  duty.  The  majority  of  the  officers  are  married  ;  this 
is  not  a  departmental  regulation  nor  a  general  order,  but  it 
happens  to  be  so.  I  visited  one  very  large  post  in  which 
every  one  was  married  except  one  girl,  and  a  second  lieuten- 
ant, who  spoiled  the  natural  sequel  by  being  engaged  to  a 
girl  somewhere  else.  And  at  the  post  I  had  visited  before 
this  there  were  ten  unmarried  and  unengaged  lieutenants, 
and  no  young  women.  It  seems  to  me  that  this  presents  an 
unbalanced  condition  of  affairs,  which  should  be  considered 
and  adjusted  by  Congress  even  before  the  question  of  lineal 
promotion. 

It  is  true  that  the  commanding  officer  is  supposed  to  be 
the  most  important  personage  in  an  army  post,  but  that  is 
not  so.  He,  as  well  as  every  one  else  in  it,  is  ruled  by  a 
young  person  with  a  brass  trumpet,  who  apparently  never 
sleeps,  eats,  or  rests,  and  who  spends  his  days  tooting  on  his 

190 


THE    OMNIPOTENT   BUGLER 


A  Civilian  at  an  Army  Post 

bugle  in  the  middle  of  the  parade  in  rainy  and  in  sunny 
weather  and  through  good  and  evil  report.  He  sounds  in  all 
thirty-seven  "calls"  a  day,  and  the  garrison  gets  up  and  lies 
down,  and  eats,  and  waters  the  horses,  and  goes  to  church 
and  school,  and  to  horse  exercise,  and  mounts  guard,  and 
drills  recruits,  and  parades  in  full  dress  whenever  he  thinks 
they  should.  His  prettiest  call  is  reveille,  which  is  sounded 
at  half-past  six  in  the  morning.  It  is  bright  and  spirited, 
and  breathes  promise  and  hope  for  the  new  day,  and  I  per- 
sonally liked  it  best  because  it  meant  that  while  I  still  had 
an  hour  to  sleep,  three  hundred  other  men  had  to  get  up  and 
clean  cold  guns  and  things  in  the  semi-darkness.  Next  to 
the  bugler  in  importance  is  the  quartermaster.  He  is  a  cap- 
tain or  a  first  lieutenant  with  rare  executive  ability,  and  it  is 
he  who  supplies  the  garrison  with  those  things  which  make 
life  bearable  or  luxurious,  and  it  is  he  who  is  responsible  to 
the  Government  for  every  coat  of  whitewash  on  the  stables, 
and  for  the^new  stove-lid  furnished  the  cook  of  N  Troop, 
Thirteenth  Cavalry.  He  is  the  hardest-worked  man  in  the 
post,  although  that  would  possibly  be  denied  by  every  other 
ofiicer  in  it ;  and  he  is  supposed  to  be  an  authority  on  archi- 
tecture, sanitary  plumbing,  veterinary  surgery,  household 
furnishing  from  the  kitchen  range  to  the  electric  button  on 
the  front  door,  and  to  know  all  things  concerning  martial 
equipments  from  a  sling-belt  to  an  ambulance. 

He  is  a  wonderful  man,  and  possessed  of  a  vast  and  in- 
tricate knowledge,  but  his  position  in  the  post  is  very  much 
like  that  of  a  base-ball  umpire's  on  the  field,  for  he  is  never 
thanked  if  he  does  well,  and  is  abused  by  every  one  on 
principle.  And  he  is  never  free.  At  the  very  minute  he  is 
lifting  the  green  mint  to  his  lips,  his  host  will  say,  "  By- 
the-way,  my  striker  tells  me  that  last  piece  of  stove-pipe 

M  193 


The  West  from  a  Car  -  Window 

you  furnished  us  does  not  fit  by  two  inches ;  I  don't  believe 
you  looked  at  the  dimensions;"  and  when  he  hastens  to 
join  the  ladies  for  protection,  he  is  saluted  with  an  anxious 
chorus  of  inquiries  as  to  when  he  is  going  to  put  that  pane 
of  glass  in  the  second-story  window,  and  where  are  those 
bricks  for  the  new  chimney.  His  worst  enemies,  however, 
lie  far  afield,  for  he  wages  constant  war  with  those  clerks 
at  the  Treasury  Department  at  Washington  who  go  over  his 
accounts  and  papers,  and  who  take  keen  and  justifiable 
pride  in  making  him  answer  for  every  fraction  of  a  cent 
which  he  has  left  unexplained.  The  Government,  for  in- 
stance, furnishes  his  storehouse  with  a  thousand  boxes  of 
baking-powder,  valued  at  seventy  dollars,  or  seven  cents  a 
box.  If  he  sells  three  boxes  for  twenty-five  cents — I  am 
quoting  an  actual  instance — the  Treasury  Department  re- 
turns his  papers,  requesting  him  to  explain  who  got  the 
four  cents,  and  is  anxious  to  know  what  he  means  by  it. 

I  once  saw  some  tin  roofs  at  a  post ;  they  had  been 
broken  in  coming,  and  the  quartermaster  condemned  them. 
That  was  a  year  ago,  and  his  papers  complaining  about 
these  tin  roofs  have  been  travelling  back  and  forth  between 
contractor  and  express  agent  and  the  department  at  Wash- 
ington and  the  quartermaster  ever  since,  and  they  now  make 
up  a  bundle  of  seventy  different  papers.  Sometimes  the 
quartermaster  defeats  the  Treasury  Department ;  sometimes 
it  requires  him  to  pay  money  out  of  his  own  pocket.  Three 
revolvers  were  stolen  out  of  their  rack  once,  and  the  post 
quartermaster  was  held  responsible  for  their  loss.  He  ob- 
jected to  paying  the  sum  the  Government  required,  and 
pointed  out  that  the  revolvers  should  have  been  properly 
locked  in  the  rack.  The  Government  replied  that  the  lock 
furnished  by  it  was  perfect,  and  not  to  be  tampered  with  or 

194 


A  Civilian  at  an  Army  Post 

scoffed  at,  and  that  his  excuse  was  puerile.  This  quarter- 
master had  a  mechanic  in  his  company,  and  he  sent  for  the 
young  man,  and  told  him  to  go  through  the  barracks  and 
open  all  the  locks  he  could.  At  the  end  of  an  hour  every 
rack  and  soldier's  box  in  the  post  were  burglarized,  and  the 
Government  paid  for  the  revolvers. 

The  post  quartermaster's  only  pleasure  lies  in  his  store- 
house, and  in  the  neatness  and  order  in  which  he  keeps  his 
supplies.  He  dearly  loves  to  lead  the  civilian  visitor  through 
these  long  rows  of  shelves,  and  say,  while  clutching  at  his 
elbow  to  prevent  his  escape,  "You  see,  there  are  all  the 
shovels  in  that  corner ;  then  over  there  I  have  the  Sibley 
tents,  and  there  on  that  shelf  are  the  blouses,  and  next  to 
them  are  the  overcoats,  and  there  are  the  canvas  shoes,  and 
on  that  shelf  we  keep  matches,  and  down  here,  you  see,  are 
the  boots.  Everything  is  in  its  proper  place."  At  which 
you  are  to  look  interested,  and  say,  "Ah,  yes!'*  just  as 
though  you  had  expected  to  see  the  baking-powder  mixed 
with  the  pith  helmets,  and  the  axe-handles  and  smoking- 
tobacco  grouped  together  on  the  floor. 

After  the  quartermaster,  the  adjutant,  to  the  mind  of  the 
civilian  at  least,  is  the  most  superior  being  in  the  post.  He  is 
a  lieutenant  selected  by  the  colonel  to  act  as  his  conscience- 
keeper  and  letter-writer,  and  to  convey  his  commands  to  the 
other  officers.  It  is  his  proud  privilege  to  sit  in  the  colonel's 
own  room  and  sign  papers,  and  to  dictate  others  to  his  as- 
sistant non-coms,  and  it  is  one  of  his  duties  to  oversee  the 
guard-mount,  and  to  pick  out  the  smartest-looking  soldier 
to  act  as  the  colonel's  orderly  for  the  day.  You  must  un- 
derstand that  as  the  colonel's  orderly  does  not  have  to 
remain  on  guard  at  night,  the  men  detailed  for  guard  duty 
vie  with  each  other  in  presenting  an  appearance  sufficiently 

197 


The  West  from  a  Car  -  Window 

brilliant  to  attract  the  adjutant's  eye,  and  as  they  all  look 
exactly  alike,  the  adjutant  has  to  be  careful.  He  sometimes 
spends  five  long  minutes  and  much  mental  effort  in  going 
from  one  end  of  the  ranks  to  the  other  to  see  if  Number 
Three's  boots  are  better  blacked  than  Number  Two's,  and 
in  trying  to  decide  whether  the  fact  that  Murphy's  gun- 
barrel  is  oilier  than  Cronin's  should  weigh  against  the  fact 
that  Cronin's  gloves  are  new,  while  Murphy's  are  only  fresh 
from  the  wash,  both  having  tied  on  the  condition  of  their 
cartridges,  which  have  been  rubbed  to  look  like  silver,  and 
which  must  be  an  entirely  superflous  nicety  to  the  Indian 
who  may  eventually  be  shot  with  them.  This  is  one  of  the 
severest  duties  of  an  adjutant's  routine,  and  after  having 
accompanied  one  of  them  through  one  of  these  prize  exhibi- 
tions, I  was  relieved  to  hear  him  confess  his  defeat  by  tell- 
ing the  sergeant  that  Cronin  and  Murphy  could  toss  for  it. 
Another  perquisite  of  the  adjutant's  is  his  right  to  tell  his 
brother  officers  at  mess  in  a  casual  way  that  they  must  act 
as  officer  of  the  day  or  officer  of  the  guard,  or  relieve  Lieu- 
tenant Quay  while  he  goes  quail-hunting,  or  take  charge  of 
Captain  Blank's  troop  of  raw  recruits  until  the  captain  re- 
turns to  their  relief.  To  be  able  to  do  this  to  men  who 
outrank  you,  and  who  are  much  older  than  yourself,  and 
just  as  though  the  orders  came  from  you  direct,  must  be  a 
great  pleasure,  especially  as  the  others  are  not  allowed  the 
satisfaction  of  asking,  "  Who  says  I  must  ?"  or,  "  What's 
the  matter  with  your  doing  it  yourself  ?"  These  are  the 
officials  of  the  post;  the  unofficials,  the  wives  and  the 
children,  make  the  social  life  whatever  it  is. 

There  are  many  in  the  East  who  think  life  at  an  army 
post  is  one  of  discomfort  and  more  or  less  monotony,  re- 
lieved by  petty  gossip  and  flirtations.    Of  course  one  cannot 

198 


ji|H|IHIikHHn 


UNITED  STATES   CAVALRYMAN   IN  PULL  DRESS 


^' 


A  Civilian  at  an  Army  Post 

tell  in  a  short  visit  whether  or  not  the  life  might  become 
monotonous,  though  one  rather  suspects  it  would,  but  the 
discomforts  are  quite  balanced  by  other  things  which 
we  cannot  get  in  the  city.  Of  jealousy  and  gossip  I  saw 
little.  I  was  told  by  one  officer's  wife  that  to  the  rail- 
roads was  due  the  credit  of  the  destruction  of  flirtations 
at  garrisons ;  and  though  I  had  heard  of  many  great  ad- 
vances and  changes  of  conditions  and  territories  brought 
about  by  the  coming  of  the  railroads,  this  was  the  first 
time  I  had  ever  heard  they  had  interfered  with  the  course 
of  more  or  less  true  love.  She  explained  it  by  saying  that 
in  the  days  when  army  posts  lay  afar  from  the  track  of 
civilization  the  people  were  more  dependent  upon  one  an- 
other, and  that  then  there  may  have  existed  Mrs.  Hauksbees 
and  Mrs.  Knowles,  but  that  to-day  the  railroads  brought  in 
fresh  air  and  ideas  from  all  over  the  country,  and  that  the 
officers  were  constantly  being  exchanged,  and  others  coming 
and  going  on  detached  service,  and  that  visitors  from  the 
bigger  outside  world  were  appearing  at  all  times. 

The  life  impresses  a  stranger  as  such  a  peaceful  sort  of  an 
existence  that  he  thinks  that  must  be  its  chief  and  great 
attraction,  and  that  which  makes  the  army  people,  as  they 
call  themselves,  so  well  content.  It  sounds  rather  absurd 
to  speak  of  an  army  post  of  all  places  in  the  world  as  peace- 
ful ;  but  the  times  are  peaceful  now,  and  there  is  not  much 
work  for  the  officers  to  do,  and  they  enjoy  that  blessing 
which  is  only  to  be  found  in  the  army  and  in  the  Church 
of  Rome — of  having  one's  life  laid  out  for  one  by  others, 
and  in  doing  what  one  is  told,  and  in  not  having  to  decide 
things  for  one's  self.  You  are  sure  of  your  home,  of  your 
income,  and  you  know  exactly  what  is  going  to  be  your 
work  a  month  or  five  years  later.     You  are  not  dependent 

201 


The  West  from  a  Car -Window 

on  the  rise  of  a  certain  stock,  nor  the  slave  of  patients  or 
clients,  and  you  have  more  or  less  responsibility  according 
to  your  rank,  and  responsibility  is  a  thing  every  man  loves. 
If  he  has  that,  and  his  home  and  children,  a  number  of 
congenial  people  around  him,  and  good  hunting  and  fishing, 
it  would  seem  easy  for  him  to  be  content.  It  is  different 
with  his  wife.  She  may  unconsciously  make  life  very 
pleasant  for  her  husband  or  very  uncomfortable,  in  ways 
that  other  women  may  not.  If  she  leaves  him  and  visits 
the  East  to  see  the  new  gowns,  or  the  new  operas,  or  her 
own  people,  she  is  criticised  as  not  possessing  a  truly  wife- 
ly spirit,  and  her  husband  is  secretly  pitied ;  and  he  knows 
it,  and  resents  it  for  his  wife's  sake.  While,  on  the  other 
hand,  if  she  remains  always  at  the  post,  he  is  called  a  selfish 
fellow,  and  his  wife's  people  at  home  in  the  East  think  ill 
of  him  for  keeping  her  all  to  himself  in  that  wilderness. 

The  most  surprising  thing  about  the  frontier  army  posts, 
to  my  mind,  was  the  amount  of  comfort  and  the  number 
of  pretty  trifles  one  found  in  the  houses,  especially  when 
one  considered  the  distance  these  trifles  —  such  as  billiard- 
tables  for  the  club  or  canteen,  and  standing-lamps  for  the 
houses  on  the  line  —  had  come.  At  several  dinners,  at 
posts  I  had  only  reached  after  two  days'  journey  by  stage, 
the  tables  were  set  exactly  as  they  would  have  been  in  New 
York  City  with  Sherry's  men  in  the  kitchen.  There  were 
red  candle-shades,  and  salted  almonds  and  ferns  in  silver 
centre-pieces,  and  more  forks  than  one  ever  knows  what  to 
do  with,  and  all  the  rest  of  it.  I  hope  the  army  people 
will  not  resent  this,  and  proudly  ask,  "  What  did  he  expect 
to  find  ?"  but  I  am  sure  that  is  not  the  idea  of  a  frontier 
post  we  have  received  in  the  East.  There  was  also  some- 
thing delightfully  novel  in  the  table-talk,  and  in  hearing 

202 


A  Civilian  at  an  Army  Post 

one  pretty,  slight  woman,  in  a  smart  dScollete  gown,  casually 
tell  how  her  husband  and  his  men  had  burned  the  prairie 
grass  around  her  children  and  herself,  and  turned  aside  a 
prairie  fire  that  towered  and  roared  around  them,  and  an- 
other of  how  her  first  child  had  been  seized  with  convul- 
sions in  a  stage-coach  when  they  were  snow-bound  eighty 
miles  from  the  post  and  fifty  miles  from  the  nearest  city, 
and  how  she  borrowed  a  clasp-knife  from  one  of  the  pas- 
sengers with  which  he  had  been  cutting  tobacco,  and  lanced 
the  baby's  gums,  and  so  saved  his  life.  There  was  another 
hostess  who  startled  us  by  saying,  cheerfully,  that  the 
month  of  June  at  her  last  post  was  the  most  unpleasant  in 
the  year,  because  it  was  so  warm  that  it  sometimes  spoiled 
the  ice  for  skating,  and  that  the  snow  in  April  reached 
to  the  sloping  eaves  of  the  house;  also  the  daughter  of 
an  Indian  fighter,  while  pouring  out  at  a  tea  one  day, 
told  calmly  of  an  Indian  who  had  sprung  at  her  with  a 
knife,  and  seized  her  horse's  head,  and  whom  she  had 
shaken  off  by  lashing  the  pony  on  to  his  hind  legs.  She 
could  talk  the  Sioux  language  fluently,  and  had  lived  for 
the  greater  part  of  her  life  eight  hundred  miles  from  a  rail- 
road. Is  it  any  wonder  you  find  all  the  men  in  an  army 
post  married  when  there  are  women  who  can  adapt  them- 
selves as  gracefully  to  snow-shoes  at  Fort  Brady  as  to  the 
serious  task  of  giving  dinners  at  Fort  Houston  ? 

Fort  Sam  Houston  at  San  Antonio  is  one  of  the  three 
largest  posts  in  the  country,  and  is  in  consequence  one  of 
the  heavens  towards  which  the  eyes  of  the  army  people 
turn.  It  is  only  twenty  minutes  from  the  city,  and  the 
weather  is  mild  throughout  the  year,  and  in  the  summer 
there  are  palm-trees  around  the  houses;  and  white  uni- 
forms— which  are  unknown  to  the  posts  farther  north,  and 

90& 


The  West  from  a  Car  -  Window 

which  are  as  pretty  as  they  are  hard  to  keep  clean — make 
the  parade-ground  look  like  a  cricket -field.  They  have 
dances  at  this  post  twice  a  month,  the  regimental  band  fur- 
nishing the  music,  and  the  people  from  town  helping  out 
the  sets,  and  the  oflScers  in  uniforms  with  red,  white,  and 
yellow  stripes.  A  military  ball  is  always  very  pretty,  and 
the  dancing-hall  at  Houston  is  decorated  on  such  occasions 
with  guidons  and  flags,  and  palms  and  broad-leaved  plants, 
which  grow  luxuriously  everywhere,  and  cost  nothing.  I 
went  directly  from  this  much-desired  post  to  the  little  one 
at  Oklahoma  City,  which  is  a  one-company  post,  and  where 
there  are  no  semi-monthly  dances  or  serenades  by  the  band ; 
but  where,  on  the  other  hand,  the  officers  do  not  stumble 
over  an  enlisted  man  at  every  step  who  has  to  be  saluted, 
and  who  stands  still  before  them,  as  though  he  meant  to 
"  hold  them  up "  or  ask  his  way,  until  he  is  recognized. 
The  post  at  Oklahoma  City  is  not  so  badly  off,  even  though 
it  is  built  of  logs  and  mud,  for  the  town  is  near  by,  and  the 
men  get  leave  to  visit  it  when  they  wish.  But  it  serves  to 
give  one  an  idea  of  the  many  other  one -company  posts 
scattered  in  lonely  distances  along  the  borders  of  the  fron- 
tier, where  there  are  no  towns,  and  where  every  man  knows 
what  the  next  man  is  going  to  say  before  he  speaks — sin- 
gle companies  which  the  Government  has  dropped  out 
there,  and  which  it  has  apparently  forgotten,  as  a  man 
forgets  the  book  he  has  tucked  away  in  his  shelf  to  read 
on  some  rainy  day.  They  will  probably  find  they  are  re- 
membered when  the  rainy  days  come.  Fort  Sill,  in  the 
Oklahoma  Territory,  is  one  of  the  eight-company  posts.  I 
visited  several  of  these,  and  liked  them  better  than  those 
nearer  the  cities ;  but  then  I  was  not  stationed  there.  The 
people  at  these  smaller  isolated  posts  seem  to  live  more 

206 


■'m 


A  Civilian  at  an  Army  Post 

contentedly  together.  There  is  not  enough  of  them  to 
separate  into  cliques  or  sets,  as  they  did  at  the  larger  sta- 
tions, and  they  were  more  dependent  one  upon  another. 
There  was  a  night  when  one  officer  on  the  line  gave  a  sup- 
per, and  another  (one  of  his  guests)  said  he  wished  to  con- 
tribute the  cigars.  There  had  not  been  an  imported  cigar 
in  that  post  for  a  year  at  least,  and  when  Captain  Ellis  brought 
in  a  fresh  box  with  two  paper  stamps  about  it,  and  the  little 
steamer  engraved  on  the  gray  band  met  our  eyes,  and  we 
knew  they  had  paid  the  customs  duty,  there  was  a  most 
unseemly  cheer  and  undignified  haste  to  have  the  box 
opened.  And  then  each  man  laid  his  cigar  beside  his 
plate,  and  gazed  and  sniffed  at  it,  and  said  "  Ah  !"  and 
beamed  on  every  one  else,  and  put  off  lighting  it  as 
long  as  he  possibly  could.  That  was  a  memorable 
night,  and  I  shall  never  sufficiently  thank  Captain  Ellis 
for  that  cigar,  and  for  showing  me  how  little  we  of 
the  East  appreciate  the  little  things  we  have  always  with 
us,  and  which  become  so  important  when  they  are  taken 
away. 

Fort  Sill  is  really  a  summer  resort ;  at  least,  that  is  what 
the  officers  say.  I  was  not  there  in  summer,  but  it  made  a 
most  delightful  winter  resort.  There  is  really  no  reason  at 
all  why  people  should  not  go  to  these  interior  army  posts, 
as  well  as  to  the  one  at  Point  Comfort,  and  spend  the  sum- 
mer or  winter  there,  either  for  their  health  or  for  their 
pleasure.  They  can  reach  Fort  Sill,  for  instance,  in  a  three- 
days'  journey  from  New  York,  and  then  there  are  two  days 
of  staging,  and  you  are  in  a  beautiful  valley,  with  rivers 
running  over  rocky  beds,  with  the  most  picturesque  Ind- 
ians all  about  you,  and  with  red  and  white  flags  wigwagging 
from  the  parade  to  the  green  mountain  -  tops,  and  good 
o  209 


The  West  from  a  Car  -  Window 


THE    BARRACKS,   FORT    HOUSTON 


looking  boy-ofRcers  to  expJaiii  the  new  regulations,  and  the 
best  of  hunting  and  fishing. 

I  do  not  know  how  the  people  of  Fort  Silbwill  like  hav- 
ing their  home  advertised  in  this  way,  but  it  seems  a  pity 
others  should  not  enjoy  following  Colonel  Jones  over  the 
prairie  after  jack-rabbits.  We  started  four  of  them  in  one 
hour,  and  that  is  a  very  good  sport  when  you  have  a  field 
of  twenty  men  and  women  and  a  pack  of  good  hounds. 
The  dogs  of  Colonel  Jones  were  not  as  fast  as  the  rabbits, 
but  they  were  faster  than  the  horses,  and  so  neither  dogs 
nor  rabbits  were  hurt ;  and  that  is  as  it  should  be,  for,  as 
Colonel  Jones  says,  if  you  caught  the  rabbits,  there  would 
be  no  more  rabbits  to  catch.     Of  the  serious  side  of  the 

210 


A  Civilian  at  an  Army  Post 

life  of  an  army  post,  of  the  men  and  of  the  families  of  the 
men  who  are  away  on  dangerous  field  service,  I  have  said 
nothing,  because  there  was  none  of  it  when  I  was  there, 
nor  of  the  privations  of  those  posts  up  in  the  far  North- 
west, where  snow  and  ice  are  almost  a  yearly  accompani- 
ment, and  where  the  mail  and  the  papers,  which  are  such  a 
mockery  as  an  exchange  for  the  voices  of  real  people,  come 
only  twice  a  month. 

It  would  be  an  incomplete  story  of  life  at  a  post  which 
said  nothing  of  the  visits  of  homesickness,  which,  many 
strong  men  in  the  West  have  confessed  to  me,  is  the  worst 
sickness  with  which  man  is  cursed.  And  it  is  an  illness 
which  comes  at  irregular  periods  to  those  of  the  men  who 
know  and  who  love  the  East.  It  is  not  a  homesickness  for 
one  home  or  for  one  person,  but  a  case  of  that  madness 
which  seized  Private  Ortheris,  only  in  a  less  malignant  form, 
and  in  the  officers'  quarters.  An  impotent  protest  against 
the  immutability  of  time  and  of  space  is  one  of  its  symp- 
toms— a  sick  disgust  of  the  blank  prairie,  blackened  by 
fire  as  though  it  had  been  drenched  with  ink,  the  bare 
parade-ground,  the  same  faces,  the  same  stories,  the  same 
routine  and  detailed  life,  which  promises  no  change  or  end  ; 
and  with  these  a  longing  for  streets  and  rows  of  houses  that 
seemed  commonplace  before,  of  architecture  which  they  had 
dared  to  criticise,  and  which  now  seems  fairer  than  the 
lines  of  the  Parthenon,  a  craving  to  get  back  to  a  place 
where  people,  whether  one  knows  them  or  not,  are  hurry- 
ing home  from  work  under  the  electric  lights,  to  the  rush 
of  the  passing  hansoms  and  the  cries  of  the  "  last  editions," 
and  the  glare  of  the  shop  windows,  to  the  life  of  a  great 
city  that  is  as  careless  of  the  exile's  love  for  it  as  is  the 
ocean  to  one  who  exclaims  upon  its  grandeur  from  the 

211 


The  West  from  a  Car  -  Window 

shore ;  a  soreness  of  heart  which  makes  men  while  it  lasts 
put  familiar  photographs  out  of  sight,  which  makes  the 
young  lieutenants,  when  the  band  plays  a  certain  waltz  on 
the  parade  at  sundown,  bite  their  chin -straps,  and  stare 
ahead  more  fixedly  than  the  regulations  require.  Some 
officers  will  confess  this  to  you,  and  some  will  not.  It  is  a 
question  which  is  the  happier,  he  who  has  no  other  scenes 
for  which  to  care,  and  who  is  content,  or  he  who  eats  his 
heart  out  for  a  while,  and  goes  back  on  leave  at  last. 


YIII 
THE   HEART  OF   THE   GREAT   DIVIDE 


The  Heart  of  the  Great  Divide 


vm 

THE     HEART     OF     THE     GREAT     DIVIDE 

[HE  City  of  Denver  probably  does  more  to  keep 
the  Eastern  man  who  is  mining  or  ranching 
from  returning  once  a  year  to  his  own  people, 
and  from  spending  his  earnings  at  home, 
than  any  other  city  in  the  West.  It  lays  its  charm  upon 
him,  and  stops  him  half-way,  and  he  decides  that  the 
journey  home  is  rather  long,  and  puts  it  off  until  the  next 
year,  and  again  until  the  next,  until  at  last  he  buys  a  lot  and 
builds  a  house,  and  only  returns  to  the  East  on  his  wedding 
journey.  Denver  appeals  to  him  more  than  do  any  of  these 
other  cities,  for  the  reason  that  the  many  other  Eastern 
men  who  have  settled  there  are  turning  it  into  a  thoroughly 
Eastern  city — a  smaller  New  York  in  an  encircling  range 
of  white-capped  mountains.  If  you  look  up  at  its  towering 
office  buildings,  you  can  easily  imagine  yourself,  were  it 
not  for  the  breadth  of  the  thoroughfare,  in  down-town 
New  York ;  and  though  the  glimpse  of  the  mountains  at  the 
end  of  the  street  in  place  of  the  spars  and  mast-heads  of 
the  East  and  North  rivers  undeceives  you,  the  mud  at  your 
feet  serves  to  help  out  the  delusion.  Denver  is  a  really 
beautiful  city,  but — and  this,  I  am  sure,  few  people  in  New 
York  will  believe — it  has  the  worst  streets  in  the  country. 
Their  mud  or  their  dust,  as  the  season  wills  it,  is  the 

816 


The  West  from  a  Car  -  Window 

one  blot  on  the  city's  fair  extent ;  it  is  as  if  the  City  Fathers 
had  served  a  well-appointed  dinner  on  a  soiled  table-cloth. 
Bat  they  say  they  will  arrange  all  that  in  time. 

The  two  most  striking  things  about  the  city  to  me  were 
the  public  schools  and  the  private  houses.  Great  corpora- 
tions, insurance  companies,  and  capitalists  erect  twelve-story 
buildings  everywhere.  They  do  it  for  an  advertisement  for 
themselves  or  their  business,  and  for  the  rent  of  the  offices. 
But  these  buildings  do  not  in  any  way  represent  a  city's 
growth.  You  will  find  one  or  two  of  such  buildings  in 
almost  every  Western  city,  but  you  will  find  the  people 
who  rent  the  offices  in  them  living  in  the  hotels  or  in 
wooden  houses  on  the  outskirts.  In  Denver  there  are  not 
only  the  big  buildings,  but  mile  after  mile  of  separate 
houses,  and  of  the  prettiest,  strictest,  and  most  proper 
architecture.  It  is  a  distinct  pleasure  to  look  at  these 
houses,  and  quite  impossible  to  decide  upon  the  one  in 
which  you  would  rather  live.  They  are  not  merged  to- 
gether in  solid  rows,  but  stand  apart,  with  a  little  green 
breathing-space  between,  each  in  its  turn  asserting  its  own 
individuality.  The  greater  part  of  these  are  built  of  the 
peculiarly  handsome  red  stone  which  is  found  so  plentifully 
in  the  Silver  State.  It  is  not  the  red  stone  which  makes 
them  so  pleasantly  conspicuous,  but  the  taste  of  the  owner 
or  the  architect  which  has  turned  it  to  account.  As  for  the 
public  schools,  they  are  more  like  art  museums  outside  than 
school-houses ;  and  if  as  much  money  and  thought  in  pro- 
portion are  given  to  the  instruction  as  have  been  put  upon 
the  buildings,  the  children  of  Denver  threaten  to  grow  up 
into  a  most  disagreeably  superior  class  of  young  persons. 
Denver  possesses  those  other  things  which  make  a  city  liv- 
able, but  the  public  schools  and  the  private  houses  were  to 

216 


The  Heart  of  the  Great  Divide 

me  the  most  distinctive  features.  The  Denver  Club  is 
quite  as  handsome  and  well  ordered  a  club  as  one  would 
find  in  New  York  City,  and  the  University  Club,  which  is 
for  the  younger  men,  brings  the  wanderers  from  different 
colleges  very  near  and  pleasantly  together.  Its  members  can 
sing  more  different  college  songs  in  a  given  space  of  time 
than  any  other  body  of  men  I  have  met.  The  theatres  and 
the  hotels  are  new  and  very  good,  and  it  is  a  delight  to 
find  servants  so  sufficiently  civilized  that  the  more  they  are 
ordered  about  and  the  more  one  gives  them  to  do,  the  more 
readily  they  do  it,  knowing  that  this  means  that  they  are 
to  be  tipped.  In  the  other  Western  cities,  where  this  per- 
nicious and  most  valuable  institution  is  apparently  un- 
known, a  traveller  has  to  do  everything  for  himself. 

You  will  find  that  the  people  of  a  city  always  pride 
themselves  on  something  which  the  visitor  within  their 
gates  would  fail  to  notice.  They  have  become  familiar  with 
those  features  which  first  appeal  to  him,  have  outgrown 
them,  and  have  passed  on  to  admire  something  else.  The 
citizen  of  Denver  takes  a  modest  pride  in  the  public  schools, 
the  private  houses,  and  the  great  mountains,  which  seem  but 
an  hour's  walk  distant  and  are  twenty  miles  away;  but  he 
is  proudest  before  all  of  two  things — of  his  celery  and  his 
cable-cars.  His  celery  is  certainly  the  most  delicious  and 
succulent  that  grows,  and  his  cable-cars  are  very  beautiful 
white  and  gold  affairs,  and  move  with  the  delightfully 
terrifying  speed  of  a  toboggan.  Riding  on  these  cable-cars 
is  one  of  the  institutions  of  the  city,  just  as  in  the  summer 
a  certain  class  of  young  people  in  New  York  find  their 
pleasure  in  driving  up  and  down  the  Avenue  on  the  top  of 
the  omnibuses.  But  that  is  a  dreary  and  sentimental 
journey  compared  with  a  ride  on  the  grip-seat  of  a  cable- 

219 


The   West  from  a  Car  -  Window 

car,  and  every  one  in  Denver  patronizes  this  means  of  lo- 
comotion  whether  on  business  or  on  pleasure  bent,  and 
whether  he  has  carriages  of  his  own  or  not.  There  is  not, 
owing  to  the  altitude,  much  air  to  spare  in  Denver  at  any 
time,  but  when  one  mounts  a  cable-car,  and  is  swept  with  a 
wild  rush  around  a  curve,  or  dropped  down  a  grade  as  ab- 
ruptly as  one  is  dropped  down  the  elevator  shaft  in  the 
Potter  Building,  what  little  air  there  is  disappears,  and 
leaves  one  gasping.  Still,  it  is  a  most  popular  diversion, 
and  even  in  the  winter  some  of  the  younger  people  go 
cable-riding  as  we  go  sleighing,  and  take  lap-robes  with 
them  to  keep  them  warm.  There  is  even  a  "  scenic  route," 
which  these  cars  follow,  and  it  is  most  delightful. 

Denver  and  Colorado  Springs  pretend  to  be  jealous  of 
one  another ;  why,  it  is  impossible  to  understand.  One  is 
a  city,  and  the  other  a  summer  or  health  resort ;  and  we 
might  as  properly  compare  Boston  and  Newport,  or  New 
York  and  Tuxedo.  In  both  cities  the  Eastern  man  and 
woman  and  the  English  cousin  are  much  more  in  evidence 
than  the  born  Western  man.  These  people  are  very  fond 
of  their  homes  at  Denver  and  at  the  Springs,  but  they  cer- 
tainly manage  to  keep  Fifth  Avenue  and  the  Sound  and 
the  Back  Bay  prominently  in  mind.  Half  of  those  women 
whose  husbands  are  wealthy — and  every  one  out  here  seems 
to  be  in  that  condition — do  the  greater  part  of  their  pur- 
chasing along  Broadway  below  Twenty-third  Street,  their 
letter-paper  is  stamped  on  Union  Square,  and  their  hus- 
bands are  either  part  or  whole  owners  of  a  yacht.  It 
sounds  very  strange  to  hear  them,  in  a  city  shut  in  by 
ranges  of  mountain  peaks,  speak  familiarly  of  Larchmont 
and  Hell  Gate  and  New  London  and  "  last  year's  cruisei" 
Colorado  Springs  is  the  great  pleasure  resort  for  the  whole 

220 


The  Heart  of  the  Great  Divide 

State,  and  the  salvation  and  sometimes  the  resting-place  of 
a  great  many  invalids  from  all  over  the  world.  It  lies  at 
the  base  of  Pike's  Peak  and  Cheyenne  Mountain,  and  is 
only  an  hour's  drive  from  the  great  masses  of  jagged  red 
rock  known  as  the  Garden  of  the  Gods.  Pike's  Peak,  the 
Garden  of  the  Gods,  and  the  Mount  of  the  Holy  Cross  are 
the  proudest  landmarks  in  the  State.  This  last  mountain 
was  regarded  for  many  years  almost  as  a  myth,  for  while 
many  had  seen  the  formation  which  gives  it  its  name,  no 
one  could  place  the  mountain  itself,  the  semblance  of  the 
cross  disappearing  as  one  drew  near  to  it.  But  in  1876  Mr. 
Hayden,  of  the  Government  Survey,  and  Mr.  W.  H  Jack- 
son, of  Denver,  found  it,  climbed  it,  and  photographed  it, 
and  since  then  artists  and  others  have  made  it  familiar. 
But  it  will  never  become  so  familiar  as  to  lose  aught  of  its 
wonderfully  impressive  grandeur. 

There  are  also  near  Colorado  Springs  those  mineral  wa- 
ters which  give  it  its  name,  and  of  which  the  people  are  so 
proud  that  they  have  turned  Colorado  Springs  into  a  pro- 
hibition town,  and  have  made  drinking  the  waters,  as  it 
were,  compulsory.  This  is  an  interesting  example  of  peo- 
ple who  support  home  industries.  There  is  a  casino  at  the 
Springs,  where  the  Hungarian  band  plays  in  summer,  a 
polp  field,  a  manufactured  lake  for  boating,  and  hundreds 
of  beautiful  homes,  fashioned  after  the  old  English  country- 
house,  even  to  the  gate-keeper's  lodge  and  the  sun  dial  on 
the  lawn.  And  there  are  canons  that  inspire  one  not  to 
attempt  to  write  about  them.  There  are  also  many  English 
people  who  have  settled  there,  and  who  vie  with  the  Eastern 
visitors  in  the  smartness  of  their  traps  and  the  appearance 
of  their  horses.  Indeed,  both  of  these  cities  have  so  taken 
on  the  complexion  of  the  East  that  one  wonders  whether  it 

821 


The  West  from  a  Car  -  Window 

is  true  that  the  mining  towns  of  Creede  and  Leadville  lie 
only  twelve  hours  away,  and  that  one  is  thousands  of  miles 
distant  from  the  City  of  New  York. 

It  is  possible  that  some  one  may  have  followed  this  series 
of  articles,  of  which  this  is  the  last,  from  the  first,  and  that 
he  may  have  decided,  on  reading  them,  that  the  West  is 
filled  with  those  particular  people  and  institutions  of  which 
these  articles  have  treated,  and  that  one  steps  from  ranches 
to  army  posts,  and  from  Indian  reservations  to  mining 
camps  with  easy  and  uninterrupted  interest.  This  would 
be,  perhaps  it  is  needless  to  say,  an  entirely  erroneous 
idea.  I  only  touched  on  those  things  which  could  not  be 
found  in  the  East,  and  said  nothing  of  the  isolation  of  these 
particular  and  characteristic  points  of  interest,  of  the  com- 
monplace and  weary  distances  which  lay  between  them,  and 
of  the  difiiculty  of  getting  from  one  point  to  another.  For 
days  together,  while  travelling  to  reach  something  of  pos- 
sible interest,  I  might  just  as  profitably,  as  far  as  any  ma- 
terial presented  itself,  have  been  riding  through  New  Jersey 
Pennsylvania,  or  Ohio.  Indians  do  not  necessarily  join 
hands  with  the  cowboys,  nor  army  posts  nestle  at  the  feet 
of  mountains  filled  with  silver.  The  West  is  picturesque 
in  spots,  and,  as  the  dramatic  critics  say,  the  interest  is  not 
sustained  throughout.  I  confess  I  had  an  idea  that  after 
I  had  travelled  four  days  in  a  straight  line  due  west,  every 
minute  of  my  time  would  be  of  value,  and  that  if  each 
man  I  met  was  not  a  character  he  would  tell  stories  of 
others  who  were,  and  that  it  would  merely  be  necessary 
for  me  to  keep  my  eyes  open  to  have  picturesque  and 
dramatic  people  and  scenes  pass  obligingly  before  them. 
I  was  soon  undeceived  in  this,  and  learned  that  in  order  to 
reach  the  West  we  read  about,  it  would  be  necessary  for 

222 


.0k 


The  Heart  of  the  Great  Divide 

me  to  leave  the  railroad,  and  that  I  must  pay^Wfc  hour 
of  interest  with  days  of  the  most  unprofitable  travel.  Mat- 
thew Arnold  said,  when  he  returned  to  England,  that  he 
had  found  this  country  "  uninteresting,"  and  every  Ameri- 
can was  properly  indignant,  and  said  he  could  have  forgiven 
him  any  adjective  but  that.  If  Matthew  Arnold  travelled 
from  Pittsburg  to  St.  Louis,  from  St.  Louis  to  Corpus  Christi, 
and  from  Corpus  Christi  back  through  Texas  to  the  Indian 
Territory,  he  not  only  has  my  sympathy,  but  I  admire  him 
as  a  descriptive  writer.  For  those  who  find  the  level  farm 
lands  of  Indiana,  Illinois,  Missouri,  Kansas,  and  the  ranches 
of  upper  Texas,  and  the  cactus  of  Southern  Texas,  and  the 
rolling  prairie  of  the  Indian  Territory  interesting,  should 
travel  from  Liverpool  to  London  on  either  line  they  please 
to  select,  and  they  will  understand  the  Englishman's  dis- 
content. Hundreds  of  miles  of  level  mud  and  snow  fol- 
lowed by  a  hot  and  sandy  soil  and  uncultivated  farm  lands 
are  not  as  interesting  as  hedges  of  hawthorn  or  glimpses 
of  the  Thames  or  ivy-covered  country-houses  in  parks  of 
oak.  The  soldiers  who  guard  this  land,  the  Indians  who 
are  being  crowded  out  of  it,  and  the  cowboys  who  gallop 
over  it  and  around  their  army  of  cattle,  are  interesting,  but 
they  do  not  stand  at  the  railroad  stations  to  be  photo- 
graphed and  to  exhibit  their  peculiar  characteristics. 

But  after  one  leaves  these  different  States  and  rides  be- 
tween the  mountain  ranges  of  Colorado,  he  commits  a  sin 
if  he  does  not  sit  day  and  night  by  the  car  window.  It  is 
best  to  say  this  as  it  shows  the  other  side  of  the  shield. 

You  may,  while  travelling  in  the  West,  enjoy  the  pictu- 
resque excitement  of  being  held  up  by  train  robbers,  but 
you  are  in  much  more  constant  danger  of  being  held  up  by 
commercial  travellers  and  native  Western  men,  who  de- 

P  226 


The  West  from  a  Car  -  Window 

maud  that  you  stand  and  deliver  yoar  name,  your  past  his- 
tory, your  business,  and  your  excuse  for  being  where  you 
are.  Neither  did  I  find  the  West  teeming  with  "charac- 
ters." I  heard  of  them,  and  indeed  the  stories  of  this  or 
that  pioneer  or  desperado  are  really  the  most  vivid  and  most 
interesting  memories  I  have  of  the  trip.  But  these  men 
have  been  crowded  out,  or  have  become  rich  and  respectably 
commonplace,  or  have  been  shot,  as  the  case  may  be.  I 
met  the  men  who  had  lynched  them  or  who  remembered 
them,  but  not  the  men  themselves.  They  no  longer  over- 
run the  country  ;  they  disappeared  with  the  buffalo,  and  the 
West  is  glad  of  it,  but  it  is  disappointing  to  the  visitor. 
The  men  I  met  were  men  of  business,  who  would  rather 
talk  of  the  new  court-house  with  the  lines  of  the  sod  still 
showing  around  it  than  of  the  Indian  fights  and  the  killing 
of  the  bad  men  of  earlier  days  when  there  was  no  court- 
house, and  when  the  vigilance  committee  was  a  necessary 
evil.  These  were  "  well-posted  "  and  "  well-informed  "  cit- 
izens, and  if  there  is  one  being  I  dread  and  fly  from,  it  is 
a  well-posted  citizen. 

The  men  who  are  of  interest  in  the  West,  and  of  whom 
most  curious  stories  might  be  told,  are  the  Eastern  men 
and  the  Englishmen  who  have  sought  it  with  capital,  or 
who  have  been  driven  there  to  make  their  fortunes.  Some 
one  once  started  a  somewhat  unprofitable  inquiry  as  to 
what  became  of  all  the  lost  pins.  That  is  not  nearly  so 
curious  as  what  becomes  of  all  the  living  men  who  drop 
suddenly  out  of  our  acquaintanceship  or  our  lives,  and  who 
are  not  missed,  but  who  are  nevertheless  lost.  I  know  now 
what  becomes  of  them  ;  they  all  go  West.  I  met  some 
men  here  whom  I  was  sure  I  had  left  walking  Fifth  Avenue, 
and  who  told  me,  on  the  contrary,  that  they  had  been  in 

226 


The  Heart  of  the  Great  Divide 

the  West  for  the  last  two  years.  They  had  once  walked 
Fifth  Avenue,  but  they  dropped  out  of  the  procession  one 
day,  and  no  one  missed  theni,  and  they  are  out  here  enjoy- 
ing varying  fortunes.  The  brakesman  on  a  freight  and 
passenger  train  in  Southern  Texas  was  a  lower-class  man 
whom  I  remembered  at  Lehigh  University  as  an  expert 
fencer;  the  conductor  on  the  same  train  was  from  the 
same  college  town  ;  the  part  owner  of  a  ranch,  whom  I  sup- 
posed I  had  left  looking  over  the  papers  in  the  club,  told 
me  he  had  not  been  in  New  York  for  a  year,  and  that  his 
partner  was  "  Jerry  "  Black,  who,  as  I  trust  no  one  has  for- 
gotten, was  one  of  Princeton's  half-backs,  and  who  I  should 
have  said,  had  any  one  asked  me,  was  still  in  Pennsylvania. 
Another  man  whom  I  remembered  as  a  "  society "  re- 
porter on  a  New  York  paper,  turned  up  in  a  white  apron  as 

a  waiter  at  a  hotel  in .     I  was  somewhat  embarrassed 

at  first  as  to  whether  or  not  he  would  wish  me  to  recognize 
him,  but  he  settled  my  doubts  by  winking  at  me  over  his 
heavily-loaded  tray,  as  much  as  to  say  it  was  a  very  good 
joke,  and  that  he  hoped  I  was  appreciating  it  to  its  full 
value.  We  met  later  in  the  street,  and  he  asked  me  with 
the  most  faithful  interest  of  those  whose  dances  and  din- 
ners he  had  once  reported,  deprecated  a  notable  scandal 
among  people  of  the  Four  Hundred  which  was  filling  the 
papers  at  that  time,  and  said  I  could  hardly  appreciate  the 
pity  of  such  a  thing  occurring  among  people  of  his  set. 
A.nother  man,  whom  I  had  known  very  well  in  New  York, 
turned  up  in  San  Antonio  with  an  entirely  new  name,  wife, 
^nd  fortune,  and  verified  the  tradition  which  exists  there 
that  it  is  best  before  one  grows  to  know  a  man  too  well,  to 
ask  him  what  was  his  name  before  he  came  to  Texas.  San 
Antonio  seemed  particularly  rich  in  histories  of  those  who 


The  West  from  a  Car  -  Window 

came  there  to  change  their  fortunes,  and  who  had  changed 
them  most  completely.  The  English  gave  the  most  con- 
spicuous examples  of  these  unfortunates — conspicuous  in 
the  sense  that  their  position  at  home  had  been  so  good,  and 
their  habits  of  life  so  widely  different. 

The  proportion  of  young  English  gentlemen  who  are 
roughing  it  in  the  West  far  exceeds  that  of  the  young 
Americans.  This  is  due  to  the  fact  that  the  former  have 
never  been  taught  a  trade  or  profession,  and  in  conse- 
quence, when  they  have  been  cheated  of  the  money  they 
brought  with  them  to  invest,  have  nothing  but  their  hands 
to  help  them,  and  so  take  to  driving  horses  or  branding 
cattle  or  digging  in  the  streets,  as  one  graduate  of  Oxford, 
sooner  than  write  home  for  money,  did  in  Denver.  He  is 
now  teaching  Greek  and  Latin  in  one  of  our  colleges.  The 
manner  in  which  visiting  Englishmen  are  robbed  in  the 
West,  and  the  quickness  with  which  some  of  them  take  the 
lesson  to  heart,  and  practise  it  upon  the  next  Englishman 
who  comes  out,  or  upon  the  prosperous  Englishman  al- 
ready there,  would  furnish  material  for  a  book  full  of  piti- 
ful stories.  And  yet  one  cannot  help  smiling  at  the  wick- 
edness of  some  of  these  schemes.  Three  Englishmen,  for 
example,  bought,  as  they  supposed,  thirty  thousand  Texas 
steers ;  but  the  Texans  who  pretended  to  sell  them  the  cat- 
tle drove  the  same  three  thousand  head  ten  times  around 
the  mountain,  as  a  dozen  supers  circle  around  the  back- 
drop of  a  stage  to  make  an  army,  and  the  Englishmen 
counted  and  paid  for  each  steer  ten  times  over.  There  was 
another  Texan  who  made  a  great  deal  of  money  by  ad- 
vertising to  teach  young  men  how  to  become  cowboys,  and 
who  charged  them  ten  dollars  a  month  tuition  fee,  and  who 
set  his  pupils  to  work  digging  holes  for  fence-posts  all  over 

230 


The  Heart  of  the  Great  Divide 

the  ranch,  until  they  grew  wise  in  their  generation,  and  left 
him  for  some  other  raneh,  where  they  were  paid  thirty  dol- 
lars per  month  for  doing  the  same  thing.  But  in  many  in- 
stances it  is  the  tables  of  San  Antonio  which  take  the  great- 
er part  of  the  visiting  Englishman's  money.  One  gentleman, 
who  for  some  time  represented  the  Isle  of  Wight  in  the 
Lower  House,  spent  three  modest  fortunes  in  the  San  Anto- 
nio gambling -houses,  and  then  married  his  cook,  which 
proved  a  most  admirable  speculation,  as  she  had  a  frugal 
mind,  and  took  entire  control  of  his  little  income.  And 
when  the  Marquis  of  Aylesford  died  in  Colorado,  the  only 
friend  in  this  country  who  could  be  found  to  take  the  body 
back  to  England  was  his  first-cousin,  who  at  that  time  was 
driving  a  hack  around  San  Antonio.  We  heard  stories  of 
this  sort  on  every  side,  and  we  met  faro-dealers,  cooks,  and 
cowboys  who  have  served  through  campaigns  in  India  or 
Egypt,  or  who  hold  an  Oxford  degree.  A  private  in  G 
troop.  Third  Cavalry,  who  was  my  escort  on  several  scout- 
ing expeditions  in  the  Garza  outfit,  was  kind  enough  and 
quite  able  to  tell  me  which  club  in  London  had  the  oldest 
wine-cellar,  where  one  could  get  the  best  visiting-cards  en- 
graved, and  why  the  Professor  of  Ancient  Languages  at 
Oxford  was  the  superior  of  the  instructor  in  like  studies  at 
Cambridge.  He  did  this  quite  unaffectedly,  and  in  no  way 
attempted  to  excuse  his  present  position.  Of  course,  the 
value  of  the  greater  part  of  these  stories  depends  on  the 
family  and  personality  of  the  hero,  and  as  I  cannot  give 
names,  I  have  to  omit  the  best  of  them. 

There  was  a  little  English  boy  who  left  San  Antonio  be- 
fore I  had  reached  it,  but  whose  name  and  fame  remained 
behind  him.  He  was  eighteen  years  of  age,  and  just  out 
of  Eton,  where  he  had  spent  all  his  pocket-money  in  betting 

231 


The  West  from  a  Car  -  Window 

on  the  races  through  commissioners.  Gambling  was  his 
ruling  passion  at  an  age  when  ginger-pop  and  sweets  ap- 
pealed more  strongly  to  his  contemporaries.  His  people 
sent  him  to  Texas  with  four  hundred  pounds  to  buy  an  in- 
terest in  a  ranch,  and  furnished  him  with  a  complete  outfit 
of  London -made  clothing.  An  Englishman  who  saw  the 
boy's  box  told  me  he  had  noted  the  different  garments 
packed  carefully  away,  just  as  his  mother  had  placed  them, 
and  each  marked  with  his  name.  The  Eton  boy  lost  the 
four  hundred  pounds  at  roulette  in  the  first  week  after  his 
arrival  in  San  Antonio,  and  pawned  his  fine  clothes  in  the 
next  to  "  get  back."  He  lost  all  he  ventured.  At  the  end 
of  ten  days  he  was  peddling  fruit  around  the  streets  in  his 
bare  feet.  He  made  twenty-five  cents  the  first  day,  and  car- 
ried it  to  the  gambling-house  where  he  had  already  lost  his 
larger  fortune,  and  told  one  of  the  dealers  he  would  cut  the 
cards  with  him  for  the  money.  The  boy  cut  first,  and  the 
dealer  won ;  but  the  other  was  enough  of  a  gambler  to  see 
that  the  dealer  had  stooped  to  win  his  last  few  pennies  un- 
fairly.    The  boy's  eyes  filled  up  with  tears  of  indignation. 

"  You  thief !"  he  cried,  "  you  cheated  me  !" 

The  dealer  took  his  revolver  from  the  drawer  of  the  ta- 
ble, and,  pointing  it  at  his  head,  said :  "  Do  you  know  what 
we  do  to  people  who  use  that  word  in  Texas?  We  kill 
them !" 

The  boy  clutched  the  table  with  both  hands  and  flung 
himself  across  it  so  that  his  forehead  touched  the  barrel  of 
the  revolver.  "  You  thief  !"  he  repeated,  and  so  shrilly  that 
every  one  in  the  room  heard  him.    "  I  say  you  cheated  me  !" 

The  gambler  lowered  the  trigger  slowly  and  tossed  the 
pistol  back  in  the  drawer.  Then  he  picked  up  a  ten-dollar 
gold  piece  and  shoved  it  towards  him. 


The  Heart  of  the  Great  Divide 

"  Here,"  he  said,  *'  that  '11  help  take  you  home.  You're 
too  damned  tough  for  Texas !" 

The  other  Englishmen  in  San  Antonio  filled  out  the  sum 
and  sent  him  back  to  England.  His  people  are  well  known 
in  London ;  his  father  is  a  colonel  in  the  Guards. 

'  The  most  notable  Englishman  who  ever  came  to  Texas 
was  Ben  Thompson ;  but  he  arrived  there  at  so  early  an  age, 
and  became  so  thoroughly  Western  in  his  mode  of  life,  that 
Texans  claim  him  as  their  own.  1  imagine,  however,  he 
always  retained  some  of  the  traditions  of  his  birthplace,  as 
there  is  a  story  of  his  standing  with  his  hat  off  to  talk  to 
an  English  nobleman,  when  Thompson  at  the  time  was  the 
most  feared  and  best  known  man  in  all  Texas.  The  stories 
of  his  recklessness  and  ignorance  of  fear,  and  utter  disre- 
gard of  the  value  of  others'  lives  as  well  as  his  own,  are 
innumerable.  A  few  of  them  are  interesting  and  worth 
keeping,  as  they  show  the  typical  bad  man  of  the  highest 
degree  in  his  different  humors,  and  also  as  I  have  not  dared 
to  say  half  as  much  about  bad  men  as  I  should  have  liked 
to  do.  Thompson  killed  eighteen  men  in  different  parts  of 
Texas,  and  was  for  this  made  marshal  of  Austin,  on  the 
principle  that  if  he  must  kill  somebody,  it  was  better  to 
give  him  authority  to  kill  other  desperadoes  than  reputa- 
ble citizens.  As  marshal  it  was  his  pleasure  to  pull  up  his 
buggy  across  the  railroad  track  just  as  the  daily  express 
train  was  about  to  start,  and  covering  the  engineer  with  his 
revolver,  bid  him  hold  the  train  until  he  was  ready  to  move 
on.  He  would  then  call  some  trembling  acquaintance  from 
the  crowd  on  the  platform  and  talk  with  him  leisurely,  un- 
til he  thought  he  had  successfully  awed  the  engineer  and 
established  his  authority.  Then  he  would  pick  up  his  reins 
and  drive  on,  saying  to  the  engineer,  "  You  needn't  think, 


The  West  from  a  Car  -  Window 

sir,  any  corporation  can  hurry  me."  The  position  of  the 
unfortunate  man  to  whom  he  talked  must  have  been  most 
trying,  with  a  locomotive  on  one  side  and  a  revolver  on  the 
other. 

One  day  a  cowboy,  who  was  a  well-known  bully  and  a 
would-be  desperado,  shot  several  bullet-holes  through  the 
high  hat  of  an  Eastern  traveller  who  was  standing  at  the 
bar  of  an  Austin  hotel.  Thompson  heard  of  this,  and,  pur- 
chasing a  high  hat,  entered  the  bar-room. 

"  I  hear,"  he  said,  facing  the  cowboy,  "  that  you  are  shoot- 
ing plug-hats  here  to-day  ;  perhaps  you  would  like  to  take  a 
shot  at  mine."  He  then  raised  his  revolver  and  shot  away 
the  cowboy's  ear.  "  I  meant."  he  said,  "to  hit  your  ear;  did 
I  do  it  ?"  The  bully  showed  proof  that  he  had.  "  Well, 
then,"  said  the  marshal,  "  get  out  of  here ;"  and  catching 
the  man  by  his  cartridge-belt,  he  threw  him  out  into  the 
street,  and  so  put  an  end  to  his  reputation  as  a  desperate 
character  forever. 

Thompson  was  naturally  unpopular  with  a  certain  class 
in  the  community.  Two  barkeepers  who  had  a  personal 
grudge  against  him,  with  no  doubt  excellent  reason,  lay  in 
ambush  for  him  behind  the  two  bars  of  the  saloon,  which 
stretched  along  either  wall.  Thompson  entered  the  room 
from  the  street  in  ignorance  of  any  plot  against  him  until 
the  two  men  halted  him  with  shot-guns.  They  had  him  so 
surely  at  their  pleasure  that  he  made  no  effort  to  reach  his 
revolver,  but  stood  looking  from  one  to  the  other,  and  smil- 
ing grimly.  But  his  reputation  was  so  great,  and  their  fear 
of  him  so  actual,  that  both  men  missed  him,  although  not 
twenty  feet  away,  and  with  shot-guns  in  their  hands.  Then 
Thompson  took  out  his  pistol  deliberately  and  killed  them. 

A  few  years  ago  he  became  involved  in  San  Antonio  with 


The  Heart  of  the  Great  Divide 

**  Jack  "  Harris,  the  keeper  of  a  gambling-house  and  variety 
theatre.  Harris  lay  in  wait  for  Thompson  behind  the  swing- 
ing doors  of  his  saloon,  but  Thompson,  as  he  crossed  the 
Military  Plaza,  was  warned  of  Harris's  hiding-place,  and 
shot  him  through  the  door.  He  was  tried  for  the  murder, 
and  acquitted  on  the  ground  of  self-defence ;  and  on  his  re- 
turn to  Austin  was  met  at  the  station  by  a  brass  band  and 
all  the  fire  companies.  Perhaps  inspired  by  this,  he  re- 
turned to  San  Antonio,  and  going  to  Harris's  theatre,  then 
in  the  hands  of  his  partner,  Joe  Foster,  called  from  the  gal- 
lery for  Foster  to  come  up  and  speak  to  him.  Thompson 
had  with  him  a  desperado  named  King  Fisher,  and  against 
him  every  man  of  his  class  in  San  Antonio,  for  Harris  had 
been  very  popular.  Foster  sent  his  assistant,  a  very  young 
man  named  Bill  Sims,  to  ask  Thompson  to  leave  the  place, 
as  he  did  not  want  trouble. 

"  I  have  come  to  have  a  reconciliation,"  said  Thompson. 
"  I  want  to  shake  hands  with  my  old  friend,  Joe  Foster. 
Tell  him  I  won't  leave  till  I  see  him,  and  I  won't  make  a 
row." 

Sims  returned  with  Foster,  and  Thompson  held  out  his 
hand. 

"  Joe,"  he  said,  "  I  have  come  all  the  way  from  Austin  to 
shake  hands  with  you.     Let's  make  up,  and  call  it  off." 

"  I  can't  shake  hands  with  you,  Ben,"  Foster  said.  "You 
killed  my  partner,  and  you  know  well  enough  I  am  jiot  the 
sort  to  forget  it.  Now  go,  won't  you,  and  don't  make 
trouble." 

Thompson  said  he  would  leave  in  a  minute,  but  they 
must  drink  together  first.  There  was  a  bar  in  the  gallery, 
which  was  by  this  time  packed  with  men  who  had  learned 
of  Thompson's  presence   in   the   theatre,  but   Fisher   and 

887 


The   West  from  a  Car  -  Window 

Thompson  stood  quite  alone  beside  the  bar.  The  marshal 
of  Austin  looked  up  and  saw  Foster's  glass  untouched 
before  him,  and  said, 

"Aren't  you  drinking-  with  me,  Joe  ?" 

Foster  shook  his  head. 

"  Well,  then,"  cried  Thompson,  "  the  man  who  won't 
drink  with  me,  nor  shake  hands  with  me,  fights  me." 

He  reached  back  for  his  pistol,  and  some  one — a  jury  of 
twelve  intelligent  citizens  decided  it  was  not  young  Bill 
Sims — shot  him  three  times  in  the  forehead.  They  say  you 
could  have  covered  the  three  bullet-holes  with  a  half-dollar. 
But  so  great  was  the  desperate  courage  of  this  ruffian  that 
even  as  he  fell  he  fired,  holding  his  revolver  at  his  hip,  and 
killing  Foster,  and  then,  as  he  lay  on  his  back,  with  every 
nerve  jerking  in  agony,  he  emptied  his  revolver  into  the 
floor,  ripping  great  gashes  in  the  boards  about  him.  And 
so  he  died,  as  he  would  have  elected  to  die,  with  his  boots 
on,  and  with  the  report  of  his  pistol  the  last  sound  to  ring 
in  his  ears.  King  Fisher  was  killed  at  the  same  moment ; 
and  the  Express  spoke  of  it  the  next  morning  as  "  A  Good 
Night's  Work." 

I  had  the  pleasure  of  meeting  Mr.  Sims  at  the  gambling 
palace,  which  was  once  Harris's,  then  Foster's,  and  which  is 
BOW  his,  and  found  him  a  jolly,  bright-eyed  young  man  of 
about  thirty,  with  very  fine  teeth,  and  a  most  contagious 
laugh.  He  was  just  back  from  Dwight,  and  told  us  of  a 
man  who  had  been  cured  there,  and  who  had  gone  away 
with  his  mother  leaning  on  his  arm,  and  what  this  man  had 
said  to  them  of  his  hopes  for  the  future  when  he  left ;  and 
as  he  told  it  the  tears  came  to  his  eyes,  and  he  coughed, 
and  began  to  laugh  over  a  less  serious  story.  I  tried  all  the 
time  to  imagine  him,  somewhat  profanely,  I  am  afraid,  as  a 


The  Heart  of  the  Great  Divide 

young  David  standing  up  before  this  English  giant,  who 
had  sent  twoscore  of  other  men  out  of  the  world,  and  to 
picture  the  glaring,  crowded  gallery,  with  the  hot  air  and 
smoke,  and  the  voice  of  the  comic  singer  rising  from  the 
stage  below,  and  this  boy  and  the  marshal  of  Austin  facing 
one  another  with  drawn  revolvers ;  but  it  was  quite  impos- 
sible. 

There  are  a  great  many  things  one  only  remembers  to 
say  as  the  train  is  drawing  out  of  the  station,  and  which 
have  to  be  spoken  from  the  car  window.  And  now  that 
my  train  is  so  soon  to  start  towards  the  East,  I  find  there 
are  many  things  which  it  seems  most  ungracious  to  leave 
unsaid.  I  should  like  to  say  much  of  the  hospitality  of  the 
West.  We  do  not  know  such  hospitality  in  the  East.  A 
man  brings  us  a  letter  of  introduction  there,  and  we  put 
him  up  at  the  club  we  least  frequently  visit,  and  regret  that 
he  should  have  come  at  a  time  when  ours  is  so  particularly 
crowded  with  unbreakable  engagements.  It  is  not  so  here. 
One  might  imagine  the  Western  man  never  worked  at  all, 
so  entirely  is  his  time  yours,  if  vou  only  please  to  claim  it. 
And  from  the  first  few  days  of  my  trip  to  the  last,  this 
self-effacement  of  my  hosts  and  eagerness  to  please  accom- 
panied me  wherever  I  went.  It  was  the  same  in  every 
place,  whether  in  army  posts  or  ranches,  or  among  that 
most  delightful  coterie  of  the  Denver  Club  *'  who  never 
sleep,"  or  on  the  border  of  Mexico,  where  "  Bob  "  Haines, 
the  sheriff  of  Zepata  County,  Texas,  before  he  knew  who  I 
or  my  soldier  escort  might  be,  and  while  we  were  still  but 
dust -covered  figures  in  the  night,  rushed  into  the  house 
and  ordered  a  dinner  and  beds  for  us,  and  brought  out  his 
last  two  bottles  of  beer.  The  sheriff  of  Zepata  County, 
"  who  can  shoot  with  both  hands,"  need  bring  no  letter  of 

O  241 


The  West  from  a  Car  -  Window 

introduction  with  him  if  he  will  deign  to  visit  me  when  lie 
comes  to  New  York.  And  as  for  that  Denver  Club  coterie, 
they  already  know  that  the  New  York  clubs  are  also  sup- 
plied witb  electric  buttons. 

And  now  that  it  is  at  an  end,  I  find  it  hard  to  believe 
that  I  am  not  to  hear  again  the  Indian  girls  laughing  over 
their  polo  on  the  prairie,  or  the  regimental  band  playing 
the  men  on  to  the  parade,  and  that  I  am  not  to  see  the 
officers'  wives  watching  them  from  the  line  at  sunset,  as 
the  cannon  sounds  its  salute  and  the  flag  comes  fluttering 
down. 

And  yet  New  York  is  not  without  its  good  points. 

If  any  one  doubts  this,  let  him  leave  it  for  three  months, 
and  do  one-night  stands  at  fourth-rate  hotels,  or  live  on  al- 
kali water  and  bacon,  and  let  him  travel  seven  thousand  miles 
over  a  country  where  a  real-estate  office,  a  Citizen's  Bank, 
and  Quick  Order  Restaurant,  with  a  few  surrounding  houses, 
make,  as  seen  from  the  car  window,  a  booming  city,  where 
beautiful  scenery  and  grand  mountains  are  separated  by 
miles  of  prairie  and  chaparral,  and  where  there  is  no  Diana 
of  the  Tower  nor  bronze  Farragut  to  greet  him  daily  as  he 
comes  back  from  work  through  Madison  Square.  He  will 
then  feel  a  love  for  New  York  equal  to  the  Chicagoan's  love 
for  his  city,  and  when  he  sees  across  the  New  Jersey  flats 
the  smoke  and  the  tall  buildings  and  the  twin  spires  of  the 
cathedral,  he  will  wish  to  shout,  as  the  cowboys  do  when 
they  "  come  into  town,"  at  being  back  again  in  the  only 
place  where  one  can  both  hear  the  Tough  Girl  of  the  East 
Side  ask  for  her  shoes,  and  the  horn  of  the  Country  Club's 
coach  tooting  above  the  roar  of  the  Avenue. 

The  West  is  a  very  wonderful,  large,  unfinished,  and  out- 
of-doors  portion  of  our  country,  and  a  most  delightful  place 

m 


The  Heart  of  the  Great  Divide 

to  visit.  I  would  advise  every  one  in  the  East  to  visit  it, 
and  I  hope  to  revisit  it  myself.  Some  of  those  who  go  will 
not  only  visit  it,  but  will  make  their  homes  there,  and  the 
course  of  empire  will  eventually  Westward  take  its  way. 
But  when  it  does,  it  will  leave  one  individual  behind  it 
clinging  closely  to  the  Atlantic  seaboard. 

Little  old  New  York  is  good  enough  for  him. 


THE    END 


R03 


